Ban of staples on tea bags a good start, but threat of pins in food still remains
From this month, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has prohibited the stapling of tea bags. But in order to prevent these staple pins from getting into food and causing lifethreatening injuries, the regulator has to do much more and completely put stop to their use in the food industry; educate food business operators — from bakers and grocers to restaurateurs and home-based food manufacturers, on the need for using safer alternatives such as adhesive tapes, zip locks and thermal units, for sealing food packets.
In addition, consumers should be encouraged to report to the regulator, use of staplers in the food industry and also incidents of staplers in food and injuries caused by them. Such cases are on the increase and cannot be taken lightly.
It was in 1990 that I first came across a case of an air passenger suffering a serious gum injury from a large stapler pin in the food served on board the airline. As I wrote on the compensation awarded by the apex consumer court to the passenger, my focus was more on the liability of the airline for the unsafe food served on board. (Indian Airlines Vs S N Sinha, FA No 56 of 1990) The alarm bell rang many years later, when a Chennai-based consumer activist, R Desikan, suffered severe bleeding injuries in the stomach from the stapler pins embedded in the hot ‘pakoris’ that he consumed and had to undergo surgery for their removal.
In the subsequent years, I found many more cases — while some suffered serious injuries, some had a lucky escape.
A friend found stapler pins in a sweet that her son was about to consume; a cook suffered bleeding injuries when the sharp pin in the wheat flour pierced her finger while kneading the dough; a stapler pin in the ‘dal makhani’ served at a restaurant injured a woman’s gum severely; a young man swallowed a stapler pin while drinking tea — the pin used to staple the tea bag and the thread had got loosened and had fallen into the tea, just as he was drinking it.
Several of my columns over the years highlighted the mindless practice of stapling food packets and the threat of such pins falling into food and causing gastro-intestinal perforations and sepsis, requiring immediate medical attention.
Three years ago, I read a horrifying account of a school teacher from Kolkata, Rathnam Sen, suffering life threatening injuries while on a flight to New York. The staple pins, which were in the sweet dish ‘rasmalai’ served on the flight, got embedded so deep inside her throat and the food pipe that a doctor on board could not extract all of them and had to be done at a hospital in New York.
In September 2016, a child celebrating her birthday at a restaurant in Ahmedabad had to be rushed to the hospital for removal of pins swallowed along with the food served at the restaurant. After recounting this and similar incidents in my column (“Stapling of packets must stop to avoid pins getting into food”, HT, March 5, 2017) in March last year, I wrote to the FSSAI, drawing attention to the urgent need for prohibiting the use of staplers in the food industry. Since then, I have come across more shocking cases of stapler pins — in a dosa served at a restaurant in Panjim, Goa, in October 2016; in the paneer subzi at a restaurant in Ahmedabad in August 2017.
Stapling of food packets poses a serious risk to consumer health and safety and their use should be forbidden not just in tea bags, but in all food packages.