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In order to ensure availability of safe & dope-free dietary/nutritional supplements for the sport professionals catering to their health and nutritional needs, FSSAI has joined hands with NADA by signing the Memorandum of Understanding today at New Delhi.
This collaboration will focus on ensuring coordination of co-operative activities within Government agencies in order to address the issue of doping substances and other adulterants/ contamination in food supplements/ nutritional products used in sports.
Guidance on the use of, and labelling/claims for, supplements/products for special dietary purposes meant for sports, undertake surveillance and enforcement activities for both domestically produced and imported sports-nutrition supplements/ products with particular focus on any use of doping substances and other adulterants in such products and on counterfeit products, building capacity of the regulatory staff for effective surveillance and enforcement activities at the ground level, building capacity in FSSAI notified primary and referral laboratories for detection of doping substances and adulterants in sports-nutrition supplements/products and providing education and awareness support on safe and judicious use of sports-nutrition supplements/products through guidance documents, training and awareness programme in partnership with other stakeholders are the five key areas under this agreement.
A working comprising of members of the FSSAI scientific panel on functional foods, nutraceuticals, dietetic products and other similar products along with representatives of NADA will be formed. Representatives of the Sports Authority of India (SAI), Narcotics Control Bureau and others, as and when required, may be co-opted in the Working Group.
Pawan Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI said, “This joint effort backed by an effective regulatory mechanism towards ensuring safety & quality of sports-nutrition supplements/ food products would construct a strong mechanism to curb the availability of contaminated nutritional food supplements in the open market. “This intends to develop and strengthen co-operation in the field of Sports Nutrition including healthy nutrition practices that enhance lifelong health & fitness of competing athletes. This would also ensure that the food safety ecosystem in the field of sports nutrition becomes more robust over the time.”
Navin Aggarwal, DG & CEO, NADA said, “This holistic effort aims to provide an eco-system of safe food for sport professionals across the country. It is one of the significant step for NADA to ensure healthy and safe supplements for competing athletes. Under this initiative, a collaborative program will be made to disseminate the information on the judicious use of supplements.”