After fortified salt, fortified midday meals to fight malnutrition
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COMMENTS 
As the government struggles to incorporate nutritional aspects into its proposed right to food legislation, industry has offered to engage with the government as a partner
The governments of Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry have started a partnership with the private sector to provide iron-fortified snacks to supplement the midday meal scheme.
“We have begun a partnership by providing fortified food products in midday meal schemes in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry,” Vinita Bali, managing director of leading food company Britannia, said on the eve of a symposium on child malnutrition organised by the Britannia Nutrition Foundation. “Given the magnitude of the malnutrition challenge, it is imperative to drive coordinated action through public-private programmes,” she added.
Britannia has developed a fortified energy snack under its ‘Tiger’ brand, especially for children suffering iron deficiencies and has tied up with the Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry governments to supply biscuits as part of various midday meal programmes in the region. “We have developed an energy snack which is highly fortified with the necessary iron required for children who are highly deficient in iron.” Bali said.
Asked if the company would be looking at selling the product in the market, Bali said the biscuit had been developed for malnourished children, not for the general masses. “We already have fortified products that we sell in the market as per WHO standards. These have a high level of fortification and are given to those children who suffer from severe anaemia,” she said.
Bali revealed that Britannia was in talks with other states to counter child malnutrition. She said industry was ready to participate with governments by creating products to meet specific nutritional needs, provided governments came forward to facilitate scaling up their initiatives through the regulatory regime.
Industry’s willingness to partner the government in combating malnutrition is significant in view of the fact that about 47% of children under the age of 5 in the country are malnourished; around 70% of children suffer from iron deficiencies. About 30% of children record a low birth weight.
Kamala Krishnaswamy, former director, National Institute of Nutrition, advocates public-private partnerships, in particular to tap the potential of fortified food to eradicate child malnutrition. In this context, Bali contrasted the regulatory regime for iodine-fortified salt vis-à-vis fortified foods that can help combat malnutrition.
The case of iodised salt is an example of the effects of the regulatory regime in using the capacity of private industry to counter specific nutritional deficiencies in the population. The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act was amended to fix the minimum iodine content of salt at 30 parts per million (ppm) at the manufacturing level, and 15 ppm at the consumer level, by the government in 1988. Subsequently, the number of iodisation units jumped from about 115 units in 1986 to over 900 units by the year 2000, with production climbing from under 8 lakh tonnes to over 45 lakh tonnes during this period.
The legislative change was supplemented with government imposing a ban on the storage and sale of non-iodised salt, in 1997. By 2000, all states except Kerala had banned the storage and sale of non-iodised salt; Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra imposed a partial ban.
NFHS 1998-99 data shows that in most iodine-deficiency-disorder-prone northern states, use of iodised salt in the household was over 90%. No wonder then that even when a decision was made to lift the ban in 2000, only Gujarat and Arunachal Pradesh did so. The ban was subsequently re-imposed by the central government in 2006.
Source: The Indian Express, September 2, 2010
Press Trust of India, August 31, 2010