-Down to Earth Traders say Food safety and Standards Act rolls out red carpet for multinationals The Food safety and Standards Act (FSSA) of 2006 has not gone down well with food business operators. They say sections of the Act dealing with licensing, registration, hygiene standards, penalty provisions and powers of Food safety inspectors are “draconian”. FSSA, which came into force in August last year, replaces the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act (PFA)...

-Down to Earth Food safety authority approves scientific panel's recommendations for regulating honey quality India has inched closer to regulating antibiotics in honey with the apex Food safety body of the country approving the recommendations of its own scientific panel and committee on fixing rules for antibiotics in honey. The recommendations put forth by the scientific panel, which says antibiotics should not be used at any stage of honey production, has been...

A 26-year-old man from Hooghly who lost his tongue to cancer in a Mumbai hospital last week has lent his voice to a public health campaign urging the Bengal government to ban the sale of gutka laced with tobacco. Mantu Mahato, who was diagnosed with advanced tongue cancer earlier this year, five years after he started chewing gutka, has written a letter to chief minister Mamata Banerjee urging her to ban...

A government report lends credence to the notion of “two Indias”, or the distinction between “India” and “Bharat” – a theme often debated in recent years. At a time when urban India is growing and policy makers have expressed clear preference for the trend, this report, by National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), brings India’s deep urban-rural divide into focus, showing disparities in scale and levels of expenditure and consumption and, equally...

-The United Nations The number of displaced persons worldwide will significantly grow over the next ten years due to factors such as conflict, natural disasters and climate change, according to the flagship publication of the United Nations refugee agency, launched today, which stresses that international solidarity is needed to address the issue. “The world is creating displacement faster than it is producing solutions, and this means one thing only: More people trapped...