Minimizing Consumer Grievances with Food Products - Addl Inputs

Friends,

Below are your inputs on how to minimize Consumer Grievances with Food Products. Kindly review them and if you have any additional inputs, please share. We will be submitting the whitepaper to Minister of Consumer Affairs next week.

We look forward to any additional inputs!

Minimizing Consumer Grievances with Food Products - Solutions

1. All ingredients should be printed on the pack
2. Allergen alert should be printed on the packing in bold letters
3. The exact weight of the product should be mentioned on the packing
4. Selling expired products should be made a criminal offence
5. Date of packing and expiry should be clearly visible on the packaging
6. All the products should be bar coded
7. The maximum percentage of profits on each category of food items should be decided by the Government
8. Food inspectors should be given definite KRAs and targets
9. Food inspectors taking bribes should be identified through community/circle reporting and suspended
10. Raids should be conducted to test food products for adulteration, quality, weight, MRP etc.
11. Farmers and industrial houses should be properly trained on the use of pesticides right from seeding till it reaches consumer
12. Government should create simple guidelines to help a consumer to verify what constitutes a standard quality
13. The demand-supply gap should be bridged so that the consumers are empowered to reject the bad quality food products
14. Adulteration of any food items by manufacturers or sellers should be dealt with stricter punishment including jail time
15. Manufacturers should get two chances. After second proven food adulteration, the company must closure.
16. All types of plastics in should be banned in the Food Industry
17. Sellers should be asked to print the Government guidelines about their product with their advertisements
18. Development of online food complaint registration and tracking system should be prioritized.


Consumer grievances with food products – Root Causes
1. Not enough quality checks
2. Food products are illegally imported
3. Products are put into fake packaging
4. Non-awareness on the part of the consumers
5. There is no limit on printing the MRP
6. Sweet shops are not regulated by law
7. No effective implementation of rules & regulation
8. Lack of competition for certain products
9. Food inspectors are bribed to ignore certain situations
10. Lack of bar-coding
11. No raids done and no action taken to stop this menace
12. No proper and easy mechanism to put complains and track them

Consumer Grievances with Food Products – Issues
1. All ingredients are not printed on the pack
2. No allergen alert printed on the boxes
3. The products sold are underweight
4. The quality of some items is obsolete
5. Adulteration in products
6. Many shops sell products whose expiry date is over
7. The date of packing & date of expiry is not clearly visible
8. MRP is highly exaggerated
9. No Manufacturing date is mentioned in the sweets
10. Hazardous chemicals are used in many food and many times they mix rotten material
11. Duplicate eatables are abundantly available
12. Adulterated products are very common e.g. Mustard Oil is mixed with Palm Oil, milk product is mixed with synthetic milk etc.
13. Hygiene is a big issue in a lot of stores
14. Banned substances, additives, are sometimes used
15. Many artificial and harmful products are used as preservative for many foods including vegetable
16. Corruption between big retail stores and food inspectors more