Collaborative efforts to address food safety: 6th AOAC- India’s Annual Conference

As a prominent food safety conference, it brought together nearly 300 analytical professionals.

The 6th AOAC-India’s annual Conference Towards Collaborative Leadership to Ensure Food Safety was held recently at the Park Hotel in New Delhi. As a prominent food safety conference, it brought together nearly 300 analytical professionals—including top government food safety regulators, eminent scientists, academicians, industry partners, laboratory owners, researchers and students.

Globally, food safety issues have caused crucial crises; and this two-day event provided a unique opportunity to assess the emerging trends in this field and discuss strategies to overcome various problems for building our planet a safer place to live.

The opening session began with a keynote lecture by Pawan Kumar Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI, where he highlighted the not-profit partnership between FSSAI and AOAC-India and mentioned how government regulators and the private sector can join hand in hand for building a robust analytical ecosystem in the country.

A MoU was signed between AOAC and FSSAI earlier for adopting official AOAC’s methods for regulatory control purposes in India.  Agarwal during the keynote address also proposed that FSSAI should collaborate with AOAC India Section for jointly organizing the Annual Conference involving more stakeholders. 

He further hoped to double the analysis of food products sold in country every year to improve the public perception related to food safety and security.  Agarwal also applauded and appreciated how AOAC India Section played a pivotal role in the release of the book on Key Analytical Tools in Food Analysis authored by Dr. Lalitha Gowda.  He stated that this book would help the entire analytical community, and FSSAI shall procure 500 copies of this book to propagate in all the referral and notified laboratories in the country. 

Other distinguished speakers were Dr S.K. Saxena, Director, EIC, Dr N. Bhaskar, Advisor, FSSAI, Dr Palmer A. Orlandi, Deputy Executive Director and Chief Science Officer, AOAC, Prof. Samuel Godefroy, Université Laval, Dr Kaushik Banerjee, Chairman, AOAC-India,  DeAnn Benesh, AOAC’s Past President, and N. Venkateswaran, Director, NABL.

Dr. Ranjan Mitra, President, AOAC-India, commented, “We’re very pleased to have held our Section’s 6^th annual conference. We trust that it will offer immense chance to debate on what it means to develop new food testing methodologies and how it relates to the future of food safety”.

The conference comprised keynote lectures, plenary presentations, poster sessions and interactive group discussions, creating a platform for information exchange and knowledge transfer. The eminent speakers (from India, USA, UK and Europe) covered various facets of food analysis, global food safety issues, quality control regulations, food authenticity and capacity building for the running of effective global food systems within the nation. 

Over 50 leading organisations from 6 different countries participated to converse on how to solve complex analytical problems and develop compliant solutions to ensure human health.

The attendees also witnessed the launch of e-learning portal which will act as a FSSAI’s food analyst examination guidebook.

Overall, this conference was packed with thought-provoking presentations, stimulating group discussion forums and an interactive exhibit floor.