Ensuring food and drug safety

The current state of affairs about quality of both food and drug items reflects two sides of the same coin. The Bangladesh Standard and Testing Institution (BSTI), according to reports published in last Friday's issue of this paper, fined two companies for producing sub-standard products amid mounting worries and anxieties among all quarters concerned over the flooding of adulterated food products in the market. This situation does otherwise point to slow progress in enforcing dozens of related laws to stop sub-standard products and to ensure food safety. Sub-standard newsprint and white print continue to torment their users but adulterated food and medicines can kill them. There is no denying that such low quality and adulterated goods and foods tarnish the image of Bangladesh abroad. And the domestic consumers also are subjected to the havoc a segment of unscrupulous businesses causes by manufacturing those.
Both foodstuff and medicines enter the stomach directly. As a result, reaction of poisonous foods and low quality drugs have instant effects on people's health. Vendors are seen selling food items on footpaths without any protection against dust and other poisonous particles whipped up by running vehicles. Unconcerned office-goers and common people do mostly take all such dangerous foods. Hundreds of thousands of restaurants, hotels and pharmacies across Bangladesh are now serving common people without anybody or any organisation monitoring the quality of food and medicinal items.  Rush of patients to urban and rural heath centres can easily be attributed to lack of quality control and hygiene.
Against this backdrop, the participants at a recent workshop on food safety in Dhaka highlighted the need for establishing a single and effective regulatory agency, namely, Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA) for quality control and food safety in the value-chain system. Speakers there took a positive note of the country's success in food supply while driving home the pressing need for ensuring food safety and quality up to international level. Ensuring food quality and safety should not target only export-related activities, it has to be ensured for domestic consumers as well. This was precisely what the key participants in that workshop focussed on, for bringing about changes in values and attitudes across sectors, industries and consumers to ensure food safety.
Furthermore, what is more worrisome relates to substandard medicines. Such items are now available aplenty. Reports have it that there are several 'syndicates' making hefty profits through production and sale of substandard drugs. The unscrupulous traders often target the rural markets to distribute their products, taking undue advantage of people's lack of awareness. Moreover, the adulterers also produce strips and bottles like the originals in which the counterfeit drugs are put for sale. Naked eye cannot discern the look-alike from the genuine.
The magnitude of the problems of adulterated and substandard foods and medicines is so vast that the government alone cannot curb it. An extensive mass awareness programme through publicity campaigns is very badly needed. All market places need posters and billboards containing do's and don'ts in this situation. Frequent raids on restaurants and pharmacies, as it was carried out not long ago, should resume in right earnest with mobile courts moving around to give on-the-spot punishment, in terms of monetary fines, imprisonment or both. A well-organised regulatory body with members of the civil society as well as the consumer groups can help here to a great extent to stem the rot.