Fisheries Administration and Lagislation

Unit 9 - Laws relating to fish products and fish marketing

9.4. Consumer Protection and Regulations
Consumer protection focuses on the problems of consumers in relation to the sellers. The need for consumer protection arises due to the various malpractices adopted by sellers in the marketing process. Consumers of food are susceptible to adulteration, spurious, hazardous substandard quality products. An important development in consumer protection is passing of Consumer Protection Act 1986, which provides a system for the protection of consumer rights and the redressed of consumer disputes. Under the Act, consumer protection councils were established at the national state and district levels. The Act also provides for the establishment of Consumer Dispute Redressal agencies at the central state and district levels. The consumer rights are:

• Right to safety
• Right to choose
• Right to be informed
• Right to be heard
• Right to seek redressal
• Right to consumer education
• Right to healthy management

Food safety and standards act 2006
GOI in 2006 enacted Food safety & standard Act. It consolidates the law relating food and establishment of food safety & standard authority of India for laying down scientific standard for food article and to regulate their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale & import to ensure availability of safe food for human consumption.
An Act to consolidate the laws relating to food and to establish the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India for laying down science based standards for articles of food and to regulate their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import, to ensure availability of safe and wholesome food for human consumption and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto. Under the Act, everyone in the food sector is required to get a license or a registration which would be issued by local authorities. The law will be enforced through State Commissioners of Food Safety and local level officials.
The organized as well as the unorganized food sectors are required to follow the same rules. There might have difficulty in adhering to the law, for example, with regard to specifications on ingredients, traceability and recall procedures. The power to suspend the license of any food operator is given to a local level officer. FSSA will be aided by several scientific panels and a central advisory committee to lay down standards for food safety. These standards will include specifications for ingredients, contaminants, pesticide residue, biological hazards and labels. The immediate adoption of international standards, without preparing the domestic food industry to meet the challenges, the implementation will be difficult. Moreover the FSSA is filled with bureaucrats instead of technocrats. The food industry participation is limited to two in number. Industry associations which play a crucial role in the development of the industry have excluded.

The Health Ministry’s notification issued recently on the Prevention of Food adulteration (7th Amendment) Rules 2006 regarding the mandatory packaging rules will also made the industry in a disadvantageous position for more investment in packaging and labeling without any incentive. More importantly, the industry doesn’t have sufficient testing facilities to comply with the law. The law talks about international standards, risk assessment, risk communication and risk management. There are special provisions dealing with genetically modified (GMOs) food items. There is no sufficient expertise or technical facilities are available in the country for the effective management of the food issues. The Act not mentioned anything about the small tea shops or “dhabas” working in the roadsides which provide livelihood for millions.

Right to Information Act, 2005
Because of efforts of Aruna Roy (ex IAS officer in Rajasthan) and many social activist this act came in to picture in 2005. All government entities union, state, local level are covered under this act. Under this act government means any public authority which is established, constituted, owned ,controlled or substantially funded by central government, state government or any other state establishment There is one central information commission (CIC) consisting of chief information commissioner and a max. of 10 central information commissioner. CIC is an independent entity & it does not come under any government department. Only President of India can remove the commissioners after a thorough inquiry conducted by Supreme Court Under section (5) each public authority should appoint a public information officer. He acts as a link between the information seeker & public authority. His job is to accept application with prescribed fees from the information seeker, collect the information from concerned section, and supply such information to the applicant. However public information officer may refuse to supply information if such information is exempted under section (8) of RTI Act. The public authority[under sec.2(h)] means an institution established under constitution or any other law by notification issued by the appropriate government, body owned, controlled or substantially financed or NGO which are substantially financed. Record includes any document, manuscript or file, reproduction of images or any other material through computer. Information means inspection of work, document, record, taking of notes, extracts certified copy. Public information officer can take maximum of 30 days to give information.