The Central Health Ministry is seriously considering a revamp of the existing Prevention of Food Adulteration Act of India (PFA Act) to make this age-old law compatible to the contemporary needs. In order to give a positive thrust on the regulation on food and food products, the Act will also be renamed as Food Safety Act (FSA), it is learnt. The new regulations, which has been jointly drafted by technical experts in the ministry of health and Food and Agriculture by taking all the modern requirements into consideration, is currently awaiting Parliament committee approval.

With the restructured food regulations Act, the government is learnt to have decided to set up a Central Agency to control and monitor the food product licensing and related issues. The proposed regulatory framework, according to informed sources, would bring in a separate law enforcement channel in the food sector. This channel will relocate the existing integrated food and drug departments into two separate agencies under the state health ministries. The proposed central agency for food sector will be parallel to the Central Drug Control Standards Organisation (CDSCO), which will be authorised to grant approvals for new products and the state food departments will be responsible for licensing the manufacturing units and also for inspections.

However, a significant modification which is anticipated in the PFA is the merger of the newly proposed Dietary Supplements Bill which would deal with the approval and licensing of food supplements, nutraceuticals etc. The Bill that is in the draft stage now, will be finalized after the Mashelkar Committee submits its report in this regard to the Ministry of Health. According to sources, since the dietary supplements are proposed to be dealt under the Food Safety Act with the merger of the Bill into this Act, no dietary supplements or nutraceuticals would be allowed to put functional claims other than nutritional values on their labels or in the campaigns, it is learnt.

Nutraceuticals, which at present falls neither under food nor drug category for the licensing purposes, are likely to put under the new Act, so that it would be treated as food product. With this, any such products having functional claims will not come under its purview and it will be considered as drug products only, the sources said.