India’s food safety authority has warned that some lentils grown in Australia and Canada could be adversely affecting the health of consumers due to high levels of highly toxic chemicals.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has issued an order to all its regional centres to test imported lentils for the herbicide glyphosate for which India doesn’t have maximum residue levels.
It comes as the state government of Punjab bans the sale of glyphosate stating the chemical 'has been observed to be group 2A Cancer causing material .. Besides cancer, this chemical is also known for causing other health problems and has the potential to damage human DNA as per the opinion of experts from PGIMER, Chandigarh.'
India’s national food safety authority swung into action after Canadian food activist Santanu Mitra alerted them about the possibility of the Australian-grown moong and Canadian-grown masoor - a common part of Indian diet - containing higher levels of glyphosate.
“Mitra thinks that the Indian diet might have become overly contaminated from imported pulses. The pulses need to be tested for glyphosate residue at every entry point which is not being carried out presently,” said an FSSAI official.
It has asked the results to be shared with it every fifteen days. The food safety body says it will apply the international standards to test lentils for the herbicide.
Australia and Canada are the biggest exporters of lentils to India, accounting for nearly 56 per cent India’s total lentil imports in 2017.
SBS Punjabi has reached out to Pulse Australia, the peak representative body of the country's pulse industry. It defends the use of the broad-spectrum herbicide saying it has been 'registered for use in Australia for 40 years.
“All registered agricultural and domestic garden chemicals, including glyphosate have been extensively reviewed by the appropriate Australian Government regulator, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), to ensure it is safe for human and environmental health, when used in accordance with label directions,” said in a statement just a week before India’s FSSAI issued a word of caution.
Glyphosate legal action in US
A court in the United States on Monday upheld an earlier court ruling that glyphosate was a potential human carcinogen.
A Superior Court in San Francisco refused to admit an appeal by Monsanto and upheld a jury trial awarding compensation to a former school groundskeeper who claimed the spraying of glyphosate caused him cancer.
Until 2015, glyphosate was considered safe to use in agriculture but the WHO subsequently classified it as a probable human carcinogen.
Food safety and agricultural scientists, too, are issuing a warning that the use of glyphosate may prove dangerous as in Sri Lanka, where many sugarcane farmers are reported to have died due to renal failure after being overexposed to the herbicide.
Last year, India imposed a higher duty of up to 50 per cent on imported pulses and also tightened up fumigation requirements, causing many exporting countries to approach the WTO.
