New Delhi [India], August 15 (ANI): There are few things more routine in human life than eating and drinking. For the average Indian, it happens every morning, afternoon and evening–several times a day and every day of life. Yet we are far more willing to treat terrorism, environmental pollution or an epidemic as matters demanding more urgent public attention than we are to confront a threat that reaches us at the dining table.
Food adulteration rarely arrives with the drama of a terrorist attack or the visibility of a polluted river. It is quieter and, precisely for that reason, more insidious an assault on something we consume routinely and trust almost instinctively. We have built elaborate systems to protect the nation from exceptional threats, yet remain remarkably complacent about a danger that can enter our bodies through everyday food.
The problem is not adulteration alone. It is its normalisation. A danger that becomes routine ceases to command attention. Exceptional threats generate political urgency and institutional responses; ordinary ones generate resignation. But what appears ordinary is not necessarily innocuous.
The Danger We Do Not See–Until We Do
Food adulteration can, at its most serious, involve the addition of harmful or unauthorised substances that may make food unsafe–for instance, non-permitted colours or other contaminants. But adulteration is not confined to such direct health risks. It can also take the form of dilution, substitution or mislabelling for economic gain–milk diluted, expensive fats replaced by cheaper alternatives, cereals and rice mixed with inferior varieties, or spices stretched with fillers. If an expensive ingredient can be replaced or diluted with a cheaper one while detection remains uncertain, adulteration becomes commercially attractive. The consumer sees only the finished product; what happened before it reached the kitchen is largely invisible.
That invisibility is precisely what makes the problem easy to overlook–until a particular food or incident brings it suddenly into view. The bread episode offers a revealing example. In 2016, a Centre for Science and Environment study reported potassium bromate and/or iodate in 32 of 38 bread and bakery samples tested in Delhi, triggering scrutiny. It illustrated a recurring pattern: we become serious about food safety only after an incident makes an invisible risk visible.
The festive season makes the same vulnerability harder to ignore. As Diwali, Holi and other festivals approach, demand for sweets, khoya, paneer, ghee and other milk-based products rises sharply, as do concerns over adulteration. Yet the problem does not begin with the festive season, nor does it end with it. The threat remains; only our attention moves on. Food safety should not have to wait for the next controversy to become a public priority.
From farm to plate–and the invisible links
Food passes through farmers, traders, processors, transporters, wholesalers, retailers and restaurants before reaching the consumer. Every link creates another point at which quality, hygiene or traceability can fail. Loose or unbranded food is particularly difficult to trace across cities and States.
When a problem is detected, the challenge is to trace it back through the chain: Where did it come from? What happened along the way? And where else did it go? The vulnerability lies not only in the number of links, but also in what moves beyond them–outside formal, traceable channels and therefore beyond easy detection or control.
The health bill we rarely see
This is where the ordinary problem becomes a serious public-health concern. Some food-related illnesses manifest quickly; others may follow prolonged exposure. Depending on the contaminant, effects can range from gastrointestinal and allergic reactions to more serious harm. There may, however, be no immediate victim, no identifiable moment of harm and no obvious connection between today’s food and tomorrow’s illness.
The World Bank has estimated India’s annual economic burden from food-borne diseases at around US $15 billion. This is a broader estimate for food-borne disease, not the cost of adulteration alone, but it illustrates the scale of the loss. The cost is not confined to the hospital bill: it includes working days forfeited, household income diverted to treatment, productivity lost and public resources spent treating avoidable illness.
Food safety is therefore not simply regulatory expenditure. Prevention is indeed an investment in human capital.
The cost that travels beyond our borders
There is yet another bill: diminished confidence in Indian food abroad. India’s agricultural exports were worth about US$ 51.91 billion in 2024-25, with agricultural, horticultural and processed foods reaching more than 200 countries and regions.
For a major agricultural producer and food exporter, food safety is also an issue of international competitiveness. A food-safety incident abroad can lead to recalls, additional testing, enhanced controls and greater scrutiny. One rejected consignment is a setback. Repeated concerns can create something more expensive: a premium on distrust.
For a country seeking a larger role in global food markets, reputation is an economic asset. “Made in India” must also mean food that can be trusted.
Why Law Alone Is Not Enough
India does not lack laws. The Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 provides a comprehensive framework for regulating food, while the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 provides remedies against hazardous or unsafe goods and defective products. The problem is not the absence of law. It is making the law visible and deterrent across a vast, fragmented food economy. A violation may be difficult to detect, attribute and trace; by the time it is identified, the product may have crossed jurisdictions. Deterrence depends on the certainty of detection as much as the severity of the consequence. A severe punishment means little if detection remains remote.
Another dimension of the problem is an obstacle which no statute can cure: desensitisation. A terrorist attack is exceptional; food adulteration is encountered with such regularity that it risks becoming ordinary. A single contaminated product generates outrage. Repeated reports of adulterated milk, spices or sweets produce resignation. A single incident shocks us; repetition numbs us.
We take exceptional threats seriously because they are visible, sudden and attributable. Food adulteration is none of these. It is dispersed, incremental and often invisible.
From reaction to prevention: lessons from the world & the path to trust
Other countries offer a useful lesson: effective food-safety systems do not merely catch bad food after it reaches the market; they make the chain traceable enough to prevent problems from spreading. The European Union’s Rapid Alert System enables authorities to act across borders; the United States has strengthened traceability for high-risk foods; and Singapore’s SAFE framework places greater emphasis on an establishment’s safety record.
The lesson for India is not to copy another country’s system wholesale, but to make compliance visible, failure traceable and prevention more valuable than correction.
India is already expanding laboratories, surveillance, mobile testing and enforcement. The next frontier is deeper traceability, risk-based surveillance, faster testing, more effective recalls and stronger action against repeat offenders. However, law cannot manufacture public urgency. Sustained awareness is what keeps enforcement from becoming an episodic response to the latest scandal.
Yet the ultimate purpose of all this is not merely enforcement. It is trust. The consumer should not have to become an amateur chemist to trust a packet of spices or a box of sweets. What we need is not suspicion of every meal, but informed trust–trust backed by standards, testing, traceability and credible enforcement.
For that trust to endure, the system must do more than respond when something has gone wrong. It must prevent it from going wrong in the first place. The true test of a food-safety system, therefore, lies not merely in how it responds after harm is discovered, but in how reliably it prevents unsafe food from reaching the consumer. In a country that feeds more than a billion every day, trust in what we eat should not be a gamble. (ANI)
Disclaimer: Kunal Kashyap is Commissioner, CGST (Appeals), Delhi, an officer of Indian Revenue Service (IRS- C&IT) and holds a Master’s degree in Psychology. The views expressed are personal.
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