Chennai: The Comptroller and Auditor General has faulted Tamil Nadu’s food safety department, detailing systemic failures in collecting and testing samples, enforcing regulations, and prosecuting violations.
The CAG report, covering 2020 to 2023, said the number of food samples collected was low, partly because performance targets for food safety officers were not set until 2023-24. While the average monthly samples per officer rose from 2.13 in 2020-21 to 19.11 in 2022-23, the overall average across five audited districts was just 9.23 samples per officer — less than one sample a month per officer.
Further, food analysis reports of 81% of samples were “inordinately delayed”. The results for nearly 20% of the 62,170 samples were unavailable for six months, some for more than two years. The CAG wanted officials held accountable for delays.
Shortages of testing equipment hampered analysis at two of the state’s six food safety labs, the audit said. Simultaneously, high-end laboratory equipment valued at 343 lakh remained unused, either awaiting repair or for lack of staff to operate them. “On the spot test” kits distributed to district offices were found to be unused or brought into stock after expiry. Some samples sent to labs had to be discarded because they expired before they could be tested.
The report attributed poor enforcement of the Food Safety and Standards Act to staff shortages ranging from 33% to 100%. It also cited delays in approving prosecutions resulting in cases being dismissed as time-barred. This, the CAG stated, also resulted in a backlog of adjudication cases and a failure to recover penalties from violators.
The audit also uncovered widespread non-compliance among food businesses. Nearly one in four operators in the audited samples (48 out of 191) didn’t have registration certificates, and district offices lacked data on registered businesses. The report also found that a third of slaughterhouses hadn’t renewed licences.