Food Safety Standards and Laws an Essential Component of Public Health: A Critical Study

An Effective Domestic food control mechanism is essential to protect the health and safety of consumers. They are also important to validate nations to assure the safety and quality of their food Products entering into the international market as well as to ensure that imported food meets national standards. There are numerous international organizations and agreements for food trade regulations, these agreements set standards and provide considerable obligations on both importing and exporting countries. It is a well-known fact that unsafe food is a prominent cause of human Illness and around 4, 20,000 peoples die annually because of contaminated food. There is said that “If it is not safe it is not food” so it is an urgent need for every country to strengthen its food safety mechanism and Laws. Food and Agriculture Organization as a specialized agency of the United Nation mainly focused on promoting food security but still, there is scope for FAO to ensure the safety of food because in today’s world both the terms are interconnected. Another major International Organization which works for ensuring food safety with free trade between the nations is WTO (World Trade Organization).In India First and foremost legislation was the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954. The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954 was repealed and replaced along with eight other legislations by the Food safety and standards Act 2006. The primary reason behind the failure of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954 was its inefficacy to meet International requirements.