Bengaluru: Having waited a while for her peak-hour dinner order, Harshitha* tore through the ‘tamper-proof’ delivery tapes and eagerly opened up the boxes. A few bites later, to her horror, she caught sight of movement — a cockroach was running through the grains of rice in her meal.
The combo, ordered from an outlet of a popular delivery-only chain of restaurants, was on a ‘buy anything for Rs 139’ discount. “I was nauseous and could not keep any food down for the next two days. I eventually spent a day in the hospital from dehydration due to the food poisoning,” says Harshitha, a 29-year-old IT professional based in Bengaluru.
Experiences of this nature are shockingly commonplace in the review sections on Google and delivery apps and in news headlines across India. Customers report having found different kinds of pests and contaminants in their food — from live snails to pieces of metal.
With an increasing number of complaints, several states have seen efforts by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) and local food regulation authorities to zero in on public health violations at restaurants. Inspections and testing have yielded worrying findings — maggots in a Mumbai kitchen, expired and mold-covered ingredients at kitchens in Hyderabad and even shawarma samples in Kerala containing Salmonella, resulting in the death of a 22-year-old man.
Two weeks ago, a round of inspections of shawarma joints across Karnataka too found eight out of 17 samples contaminated with bacteria that “could cause severe health issues”.
A 2021 study published in ScienceDirect estimated that India sees around 100 million foodborne disease outbreaks every year, and 1,20,000 related fatalities. West Bengal, Karnataka and Gujarat reported the maximum average outbreaks. Researchers also estimate that if food safety standards remain at their current level, the number of outbreaks will increase to 150 million cases by 2030.
There are three main types of contamination, explains Nimish Bhatia, a chef, consultant and mentor. “The first is physical contamination, where a foreign object is introduced into the food. Common contaminants are hair, nails or pieces of plastic. The second is chemical contamination, which could occur when lemon is prepped in a copper vessel leading to a reaction, or if dishwashing liquid is not washed out completely. We also have biological contamination, which occurs when food goes bad, becomes old, or gets fungus.”
Under present standards mandated by the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, food business operators (FBOs) are required to register with the FSSAI. Businesses that make an annual turnover of Rs 12 lakh or less are supposed to apply for a ‘registration’, FBOs that make more than this amount need to obtain a ‘licence’. As of 2019, only 4,67,000 out of about 2.49 million — about 18.7% — food business operators (FBOs) in the country had an FSSAI licence, according to a National Restaurant Association of India report.
The scale of this gap could also be widening, as industry experts point out that the number of FBOs has at least doubled since the pandemic. In addition, the lockdown saw a wave of new types of kitchens — particularly, the introduction of thousands of cloud kitchens, which function on a delivery-only basis.
‘Cluster kitchens’, where multiple cuisines are prepared and delivered from a single kitchen under different brand names, also became popular. The cloud kitchen market is only expected to boom, with some analysts predicting that the market will grow from $400 million in 2019 to around $2 billion by the end of this year.
Cloud kitchens and increasing availability of delivery-based options bring with them major benefits for consumers — more options, even during late hours, convenience and speed. However, as the customer-business interface narrows, concerns about hygiene are even more mired in uncertainty.
Ashwin Bhagwat, a third-year student from Jhunjhunu in Rajasthan says, “We have no idea about the hygiene at these kitchens but we have no option. So we fall back on these delivery apps, which connect us with cloud kitchens.”
Students prefer tiffin centres, where simple, homemade food is available. But there is no way to ascertain the hygiene at these tiffin centres too, he adds.
In several states, home-based kitchens, which function informally through word of mouth and WhatsApp orders are becoming popular too. “From a regulatory perspective, there is no difference between regular kitchens, catering kitchens and ‘dark’ kitchens or cloud kitchens,” says Ramesh Agarwal, food safety expert and CEO of Food Safety Works. The primary difference is that when food is served by caterers in an office, for example, the person serving is responsible for the food until the point when the customer receives it, he adds.
With cloud kitchens, this responsibility is thought to end once the food is packed and handed over for delivery. “There is a gap, since regulation does not yet account for this,” Agarwal says.
"The aggregators do have their licensing and standards, but unlike packaged items, there is a lack of clarity on the specific requirements for handling fresh food in the delivery mode," Agarwal explains.
Aggregators, like Swiggy and Zomato, generally only host outlets that have an FSSAI licence. But this may be far from sufficient to vet potential violators, as a software engineer in Bengaluru discovered in 2022, when his scrutiny of FSSAI licensing data revealed that more than 300 restaurant listings on Swiggy and Zomato were registered on a single FSSAI licence, and thereby, a single kitchen or location.
To obtain a licence, FBOs are required to submit documents for proof of residence, and also fulfil the requirements of infrastructure, hygiene, water tests and other specifics under the FSSA Act. Once the licence application is submitted, ideally, an inspection of the location needs to be conducted, followed by approval or rejection of the application.
However, things often do not work this way. “A large number of restaurants and facilities are never inspected. With the right amount of money, a licence can even be issued within an hour. However, when we follow procedure and pay only the mandated government fee (Rs 100 for registration and Rs 2,000 for a state licence), I have seen cases of the licence taking a year or more,” says Shivakumar S, who works as a Food Safety Mitra (FSM) in Bengaluru. The FSSAI introduced the FSM programme to help make the registration procedure more accessible to food businesses.
The system is rife with corruption at various levels, says Rekha T, a Food Safety Mitra who works in the K R Puram area. “Despite there being a clear system in place that mostly operates online, food safety officers directly approach businesses and bypass the licensing procedure, demanding extra payment in the process, charging Rs 5,000 instead of the government fee,” she says.
She also cites instances where ‘agents’ visit some sites on behalf of officers, conduct inspections and issue warnings. “It all operates on the basis of how much of a bribe you are willing to pay,” she says.
Several F&B players point to consistent efforts by the FSSAI to conduct more inspections, however, the staff-to-FBO ratio is far too imbalanced. “Bengaluru has six zones, and a maximum of three to four food safety officers in each zone. This means 24 officers are meant to be checking on more than 30,000 restaurants in the city. You do the math,” says an expert. The Karnataka Food Safety Commissioner declined to comment on issues related to staff scarcity.
Efforts to inspect
Telangana's food safety commissioner recently established a task force that has been conducting raids on supermarkets, restaurants, and even government and privately-run hostels and PGs across Hyderabad in recent months.
Conducted in May, the drive revealed widespread food adulteration, pest infestation and unhygienic conditions in about 75 establishments, including bakeries, supermarkets and restaurants. The task force filed around 24 cases under various Acts, and expects criminal cases to follow pending laboratory reports.
In Tamil Nadu, the Food Safety and Drugs Administration Department has conducted a series of inspections in several kitchens of delivery-only restaurants in the past few years, on the recommendation of the FSSAI.
“Once we get a complaint, we take food samples and send them to food analysis laboratories, present in six locations in the state. In some cases, we send the report to FSSAI,” a senior official with the Food Safety and Drugs Administration Department tells DH.
When found to be serving substandard food, generally, a warning is issued. In some cases, a fine is levied as well, depending on the nature of the violation. The licences of the food service operators cannot be cancelled immediately unless there is a public health issue.
“Usually, we get complaints about the poor quality of a particular food, and we issue a notice if the food is of sub-standard or low quality. We cannot assume every other food is stale,” another Tamil Nadu officer says.
In Kerala, despite frequent checks by food safety authorities, there have been several reports of severe food poisoning, even deaths. The state food safety authority has now mandated stickers mentioning the date of packing and expiry, even on packed food from restaurants.
In view of the frequent instances of food poisoning caused by Arabic dishes, special shawarma awareness sessions were carried out to sensitise FBOs.
Bigger businesses hire third-party food safety auditors and consultants to ensure they adhere to FSSAI regulations, and to train staff. For instance, Curefoods, one of India’s forerunners in the cluster cloud kitchen space, conducts regular third-party audits. “Inspections are done based on FSSAI or ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) food safety management systems. External audits are done weekly in cluster kitchens and monthly or fortnightly in cloud kitchens,” says Gokul Kandhi, chief business officer, Curefoods.
Curefoods currently houses six brands and runs 75 restaurants and 350 cloud kitchens across 50 cities.
Food technologists are deployed in every cluster and city. With regard to customer complaints, Gokul says, “We respond immediately with an action plan. We have a recall process and a recall team that performs the root cause analysis (RCA) of the problem and recalls the product from the service.”
Advances
Food safety norms and standards have come a long way in the past decade, say industry experts across the board. Particularly in bigger kitchens, internationally recognised models such as the ISO 22,000 and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) are a basic minimum standard.
“Things are far ahead compared to how they were two decades ago, or even five to eight years ago,” says Nimish. He attributes this to the high level of competition in the food industry. “Right from Udupi-style restaurants to upscale places, everyone wants to win among their target audience, and the audience prioritises food safety.”
Several of these codes are integrated into the FSSAI requirements itself. The food safety regulation in India is progressive, and follows a self-compliance model, says Agarwal. FSSAI allows digital records and allows FBOs to train staff based on what is relevant. “They are not very prescriptive and set the standard on what needs to be done. The ‘how’ is up to the business to implement," he adds.
However, this means that some kitchens manage to slip under the radar, even though they serve a high volume of consumers.
Food safety involves requirements, infrastructure, skills and systems that extend beyond the ingredients and end results.
One of the primary considerations is design, says Vikas Seth, chef and culinary director at Embassy Leisure. “Basic infrastructure needs to be in place in a kitchen. For example, we need a space right at the entrance where hair nets are stored, along with a hand wash area,” he says.
Exhausts, cooking areas, cleaning areas, hot zones and cold zones, also need to be designated and separated, along with staff areas. “This becomes difficult in smaller kitchens since many restaurants do not want to give even an inch extra to the kitchen, since it is at the back end. But this area needs to be as strong as the front interface to ensure hygiene and safety,” he adds.
In practice, the back kitchens of some restaurants and several cloud kitchens are housed in barely 300 sq ft of space. Storage space is often limited, so some ingredients are prepared well in advance, and sit out on counters for much longer than the limit of two hours — deemed safe for cooked food.
“This is a common practice at shawarma joints, where the sauces can contain raw egg whites or some form of emulsified water and oil, which can go rancid quickly. But these sauces are stored outside, commonly next to the hot grill area,” says Ann Thomas, a Bengaluru resident with experience working in the food industry.
As a result, in small kitchens, cross-contamination becomes another pertinent threat. “On principle, raw ingredients must be prepared and stored separately. We use different chopping boards for raw meat, cooked meat, chicken, fish and other ingredients. They are labelled and colour-coordinated. We even use different knives,” explains Vikas. Even in fridges, raw meat is stored on lower shelves and cooked meat is stored higher up, to avoid the risks of any dripping or leakage.
Feedback and recall
Another key component missing at many delivery-only restaurants relates to customer feedback and recall. When Harshitha found her meal to be contaminated, she reached out to the restaurant through the customer service hotline and also complained to the food aggregator. “They asked me for pictures for proof and issued a refund but no further action was taken. The outlet is still up and running,” she says.
Not being able to reach restaurants is not just a frustrating consumer experience, but a public health hazard. Ideally, when a dish is contaminated, there needs to be a clear recall process. “Having food safety standards in place allows us to respond to any feedback we receive from customers,” Nimish says. For instance, if someone comes back and complains about a certain order, the bill will connect to the kitchen order ticket, and also the physical health report of the personnel handling the dish and the ingredients. “This allows us to understand where each ingredient was procured, and who checked the hygiene and quality at each stage,” he adds.
In order to standardise this process and document it, all staff are expected to log and record entries. For smaller kitchens, the workforce requirement of consistently maintaining such records is almost impossible.
Of late, technology is proving a potential solution. Mobile applications are being used in kitchens to log food safety measures at various ‘critical control points’, including procurement, storage, preparation and service. “The app we have developed takes the various requirements and converts it into a simple, digital checklist. This includes several steps and measures to ensure food quality — for instance, a visual check at the point of receiving ingredients,” says Mamatha Mishra, founder, Health First, a Bengaluru-based food safety consultancy. Some checklists require staff to take pictures of ingredients to log their condition and quality. Health First has conducted 3,000 audits in the last year across Karnataka’s 31 districts, on behalf of the FSSAI.
Smaller kitchens and delivery-only kitchens would greatly benefit from technology that simplifies the process, since they do not have access to specialists. However, it is expensive, and thereby out of reach for the restaurants that need it most. Knowledge has improved a lot over the years, but willingness to learn, not so much, says Mamatha.
Solutions
It is clear that limited manpower, low resource availability and inconsistent inspection systems remain threats to food safety and public health in an ever-growing space. While efforts to train, equip FBOs and enforce requirements are consistently being made by the FSSAI and other food safety experts, compliance remains low, and implementation, largely unpredictable.
Mamatha points out that multi-sectoral solutions are vital too. “Investment in food parks, pest control and sewage management in the city needs to be up to par as well. Otherwise, no matter how clean FBOs keep kitchens, there will always be a chance of contamination.”
The collaboration of various agencies in the space is also key. Industry professionals cite examples of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike performing site visits as well, to conduct a more holistic check. The Bruhat Bengaluru Hotel Association has been active in this regard, supporting training and hygiene management, adds Mamatha.
(Name changed to protect privacy)
(With inputs from Arjun Raghunath in Thiruvananthapuram, E T B Sivapriyan in Chennai, Rakhee Roytalukar in Jaipur and S N V Sudhir in Hyderabad)