Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Welcome to The Drip (formerly Water in Food), where we keep your mind hydrated with some science, music, and a mantra. I'm your host, Zachary Cartwright, lead food scientist at AQUALAB by Addium
Hosted by Zachary Cartwright, Ph.D.
Lead FOOD Scientist at AQUALAB
https://www.aqualab.com/
Note: AI generated. Some terms may be innaccurate. Provided for reference.
Zachary Cartwright [00:00:00]:
I'm Zachary Cartwright. This is Water In Food. Today my guest is Ashutosh Jaiswal who has been driving excellence in food quality and food safety in India for over ten years. Currently he is the group head of quality assurance and food safety at Sri Dut India Private Limited and his role includes ensuring compliance to regulatory, customer and certification processes. Among his many achievements, Ashutosh has received the prestigious American Institute of Baking Certification helping India's first sugar refinery to unlock this achievement. He also received the 13th National Confederation of Indian Industry Food Safety Award for his strong commitment to food safety. Let's hear what Ashutosh has to say on this episode. I really appreciate with our time difference you're 12.5 hours ahead of us and thank you for meeting late in your evening.
Zachary Cartwright [00:00:51]:
I came across your LinkedIn profile recently and noticed your background in food safety and food quality and all the work that you've done and the network that you've been able to create. And I'm just curious, where did your interest in food safety and food quality come from?
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:01:07]:
See, it's all about. You can say some incidents happen in my teenage time. You can say my father wasn't a doctor, he is a homeopathic doctor. And in the childhoods we are sitting with my dad and seeing the patients like just watching my father watching many cases which most of the cases, if you see the patients in my father clinic, most of them like doctor I ate something and my stomach is not feeling good. And most of the cases are like that. But that time you can say even peoples are not aware because in India food safety came very late. Those who are very MNC companies like PepsiCo, coke and Nestle are there. The food safety are limited till that the street food or what is food safety? No one knows even then actually my family background you can say that most of my cousin and every peoples are from agriculture and food industry they are working on it.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:02:16]:
So I got little bit interested to work to study food science and technology. Even that time also in India in foods and technology the food safety was there. But you can say not very strong because that time legal part of them in India in 2006 or seven they came very late. Then the actual food safety came after that. When my complete my graduation I have joined PepsiCo. So in India that time, PepsiCo, coke and nestle only four to five industries. Those food safety system is world class international level food safety system they have. So it's all about started there and PepsiCo.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:02:59]:
You can say Pepsico just punish me and little bit make me the food safety mindset. And that time I was joined only my first year in the PepsiCo and my interest and you can say my passionate is too much about food safety. I'm much learning. I was that time very less salary. Maybe you can say only some couple of $100 in dollar if you can say. But I was investing my 50% of salary into studying in food safety. My whole batch. More senior people are there, more senior people are there.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:03:35]:
But I want to learn that time. So I'm investing almost one and two year 50% salary in food safety. So it gave me the result. I am the first most you can say fresher guy who was a member of the food safety team just because of my knowledge and I invested from myself. So it was the first step. Later in PepsiCo, I worked in PepsiCo. I worked in Dubai when I was working in Dubai. So Dubai food safety system.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:04:05]:
Dubai municipality food control system is one of the best food safety system in the world. You can say after USFTA and they also get very much incorporated from USFDA. The first step was PepsiCo and then Dubai gave me the better platform to learn about the global food safety was. And after that I started in LinkedIn. LinkedIn I just start sharing small small tips, small small food safety tips. And that gave me very give recognition in Dwight municipality and dwell municipality also gave me the award of one of the best food safety manager because I upgraded my outlet from, you can say from b or c grade to a plus grade and plus because of these tips in the LinkedIn. If you saw my very old post three to four years before, there are small small tips like color coding knives and hand sanitation. That time, that way I got too much highlighted.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:05:03]:
After that I start writing on some. You can say that type of writing it will pressure you to think about the food quality like challenges. What are the mindset of quality? What are the mindset of food safety? I start writing it so slowly, slowly it got too much viral on the LinkedIn. If you saw more than 30,000 or 40,000 likes and overnight because of my thought and my thinking then in India, people in India start approaching me for writing the magazines articles on the magazines. If you saw last three months I have almost twelve articles. So still I am not getting time. This is my passion. I am doing it.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:05:49]:
So this you can say small journey of my food safety. How I got interested.
Zachary Cartwright [00:05:55]:
After all your time working at Pepsi and then investing your own time and really investigating food safety, what do you see now as some of the largest food safety issues in see as of.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:06:09]:
My knowledge or as of I am seeing the one of the biggest food safety challenge is the contaminated water supply. See in India still people are using. You can say direct river water or some tap water. And the same contaminated water supply they are using for washing the fruits and vegetables. Because in India still we are not in the metro cities. If you go to the small towns and other small cities people are still using tap water for cooking the food or for cooking the foods for washing food. Another you can say the major important is a major important for pesticide. What happened during what happened in India.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:06:59]:
If you recent the incident also when India was start exporting the US FDA and Canada a lot of these weeds and many things the consignment getting start rejecting in exports. Because of high pesticide. Because that time in our agriculture practices the people are using highly excessive amount of pesticides. Then consignment got rejected. Because the pesticide level in the out of the world is not at that level. Then slowly, slowly. Now India is moving to the organic. They're not using pesticide chemicals.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:07:34]:
They are using some herbal chemicals and other things. So this was the second and third one we can say in India. Still is the. And you can say still I'm not correct but adulteration. Why? Because in India is still developing countries and still many food vendors are. You can say are not that high level of education or something. They adulterating the food for making them more money. This is one of the major challenges.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:08:07]:
And fourth you can say food born illness and food born in a fifth. I told you awareness awareness in India. India is FSI is there food safety standard authority of India. They started to from 2011 not too much old food security system in India. So they are still facing a major challenge to aware the ground level people to teach the food safeties about awareness is you can say one of the major thing and major another factor is street food. India is the. If you saw some YouTube videos or something. India is very famous for street food means very tasty foods and very spicy food.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:08:51]:
People are tourists are loving it. But dark side of that the vendors they are placing the cart in the roadside. They still don't have that level of hygiene systems. So this is one of the critical factor of food safety. The street food and same you can say some supply chain issues some packaging and testing packaging. If you say the big industries they are still using good packaging system but still they are small scale industries they are not up to that level to testing the food packaging. So you can say these are the major challenges in India, I still have food safety. About food safety.
Zachary Cartwright [00:09:32]:
Yeah. And you listed quite a few. But just to summarize, kind of the top three that you had gone over were the contaminated water supply, the pesticide, pesticide and the alteration. But you also like foodborne illness and just lack of food safety awareness. And I think that's where people like you and myself can really help to educate so that whether it's produced in a factory or if it's street food like you had mentioned, that it can be safe for consumers. I wanted to ask you a little bit about moisture and water activity. My background, of course, is in complete moisture control. And I'm just wondering how you see water activity and moisture control being used in India in your time at Pepsi or at other companies.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:10:21]:
See moisture control, there is always two aspects. One is the quality parameter of the product, and second is the food safety parameter. In PepsiCo. Yeah, I was in the beverage. So beverage is not that level of moisture, that beverage. But if you talk about like sugar snacks and any biscuits, anything, the moisture is in quality parameter, they will give you the bad texture. But if you talk about the food safety point, the most two important point. One is shelf life.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:10:52]:
Second is microbial growth. If water activity is high or moisture is high, it will help the microbial organism to grow on the food. And last one, shelf life. Shelf life is not obviously at the term of business. Also, if shelf life is very less so, it will not make good market. So these are, I think major factor in terms of water activity in the moisture.
Zachary Cartwright [00:11:20]:
And I noticed that you recently received a certificate from the American Institute of Baking. And I was hoping you could a little bit about what that is and why is that certificate important.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:11:31]:
See American Institute of Baking generally people calling it the know. AIB giving started from itself from PepsiCo and coke. AIB have three types of standard, which majorly they are doing. One is for the bakery industry, second for a beverage industry, and third, they have general standard. So it's all about started with the beverages industry. Beverage standard. Bring the AIB in India. Still AIB don't have office in India.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:12:05]:
They have office in the US. And they are just hiring and managing auditors from the US. And I think only four auditors in India. Not more than that. Only three to four AIB auditors in India. Out of four, two is ladies and 90% they are traveling. So I met very tough ladies when in my career. Okay, so what AIB is doing, AIB is focusing on our prerequisite program.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:12:40]:
So if you talk about the ISO 22,000 FSA 2000. They will talk about the microbiology like microbiology system. But AIB will not talk about system. They will go deep level PRP. They have very good standard in PRP. Very enlarged, very detailed standard of PRP. Like everything if pest control is there. So they have proper standardized system for pest control system and any other PRP.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:13:08]:
So they have main focus on prps. If your PRP have the strongest and very good managed, other things will be automatically managed. So their whole standard is based on the PRP. If you go through the AIB standard of GMP inspection there's totally PRP inspection standard. They have based on three beverage and bakery. So what happening with AIb? See AIB is in India still there is a highest and toughest food safety audit. Toughest food safety means if they will see one mosquito she will close the audit. Okay bye Tata go.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:13:50]:
I'm going. So like is one of the most means they have a immediate failure. Even I told you one of my failure with the AIB. When I was in PepsiCo, my first job. And during second year of my job when I still as a you can say trainee or intern. We failed the AIB audit in PepsiCo Mumbai plan. Because auditor saw one very small cockroach in the truck loading area. So they are very strict for the audit.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:14:22]:
They will bring the white full uniform, all torches, lenses, everything they have. If they have small black particle. If they got in their uniform they said see your factory was not clear. So very stringent audit. So what AIB is giving us, see AIB have very good reputation. Very good reputation in the world. See if you saw AIB means one plant is taking almost two to three years to prepare for the AIB. Even my plant last time we took one and a half year to prepare the audit.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:15:02]:
And there's a four stage. In the fourth stage it will take one and a half year. And you can say how much money we spend I think in five crore indian rupees. So you can say it's more than very big amount five crore rupees. We spend one and a half year to just prepare our unit for food safety for the AIB. But it gives very better result. Because we are the first sugar refinery in the world who pass AIB audit in first attempt. So it was in the AIB.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:15:44]:
Even AIB was saying in the first day you need minimum three years and you will get failed at least first time or second time. Third time you will get passed. This was the history. But me and my whole team and even our good leadership, you can say they will give all the resources and we pass the AIB one and a half years. And with you can say a grade, it's almost 88% we got. So what is the business? If you're talking about food safety, obviously if management put the money so they also got some benefit. What got their benefit? Our unit was import and export unit. So what happening? That unit is only allowed to do the import and export to the out around the world.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:16:38]:
AIB added 40 more countries for that only unit. Give market act means if we are exporting our sugar, bulk sugar only ten to twelve countries after AIB, within our next one year we added 40 more countries in Canada. Before we are not exporting the Canada, we are added just because of AIB certificates. The reputation got very high in the market. So this, as you can say, obviously enhanced food safety, quality assurance, compliance with regulatory compliances. Because AIB will not give you your local or indian compliances. There are standards like that. You are fulfilling the all international US FDA and all the international customer confidence.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:17:27]:
Customer will get the confidence and as I say, global market access, you will get the access in the global market and continuous improvement and reduce the risk of food safety. And the last supplier relationship, it will be very easy to even if you talk about the coke. Coke has a global supplier quality assurance program, the coke as GP. But every two years they are doing the audit and they are giving another two years supplier. But when we go past the audit, we give them AIB certificate. Okay, you have AIB, no need to go supplier audit. So this is a very good supplier relationship. We maintained because of AIB.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:18:12]:
So these are the benefits and these are the history or expenses of AIB. You can say the AIB. I started my second year of my career and after ten years I made the same auditor. I reminded her, ma'am, you came first time you failed me in PepsiCo. You guys remember GRB glass, writtenable bottles, glass bottle. I was in the line in charge, audit was filled in my line. So I have my lifetime. I failed something.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:18:45]:
So now I have to pass. So after ten years of journey, same or we got that. So this was the journey of my AIB.
Zachary Cartwright [00:18:56]:
Well, since you passed the AIB on the first time around, it's no wonder that you won this food safety excellence award from the Confederation of Indian Industry. I was hoping you could talk a little bit award and how you won. Know what does it take to win an award like that and just your experience getting that award?
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:19:17]:
Yes, I will talk about the CIA, CII Confederation of Indian Industries. They are identifying the best industry practices, not about the food safety. Food safety, health and safety. It management everywhere. What you do. AIB and Cie we did it parallel AIB was the 10th and CIA at the fifth. It's like this within only one week gap. So our boss came and said there is a CIA award and I think we already prepared for audit.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:19:52]:
Just play it. Maybe we will pass because our system is best. And this was the first attempt also for CII. So on that time they have given 450 questions checklist these we will check on the audits. So at that time just I think after Covid the people are still doing the online audit, desktop audit. So what they have, they have a five auditor panels and five auditor panels and they will do the audits and the five auditor panels. Country best food Safety expert means one, you can say the ITC country head one, you can say the coke supplier program. These five, you can say five God of food safety of India.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:20:43]:
And they have to assess the CII. So CIA is not about how you complying the food safety. They will check your system one step ahead. How you excellence means if I am doing something like I am fulfilling the requirement. But they will check not fulfilling the requirement. They will check what you have means not other people are doing. So they are checking one step ahead. So overall the excellence in food safety practices.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:21:18]:
Whatever food safety practice you have, what are the excellence things you are doing? Compliance with regulation. How much and how better you compliance with regulation. Innovations, what type of innovations and what type of things which you are doing, which other industries are not doing. So they are also focusing on that. And one thing is training, how efficient is your training, how deep level and ground level you are giving. Your peoples are aware this, they are saying. And another is they are checking is a track record means how your system, food safety system is growing and how you can show that. And the last positive impact you will get the award.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:22:05]:
You will get the marketing and these all things. So CIA also we got the Food Safety excellence award from this also the first time. And it was also very tough. Like one person have to deal two auditor in two computers. Like I'm talking with you, there's another auditor. I have to talk both person. I have two headset. One is here and one is there.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:22:30]:
I am talking to both people. It was also online audit. But what was the toughest, but it was the best experience. And yeah, our system made it and we passed the CI Excellence award.
Zachary Cartwright [00:22:46]:
And what is your current role? What are you doing now? I see that you're the group head of quality assurance and food safety at current company. What is your day to day? What are you doing at that job?
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:22:58]:
I am performing as a head of quality assurance in the shirt. India Private Limited shrijas have two types of business. Not two types, we can say three types. One, they have dairy industries. Second, they have sugar industries. In sugar. They also are raw sugar, refined sugar. And you can say all type of sugar in India.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:23:21]:
60% of sugar only handling by the shridha. India Private Limited. All the export. And you can say 60% everything about the sugar in India they are doing it. And plus they have dairy industry and they have a lot of trading stuff. So we have total eight units in India. And still we are working on two extend and expansion and the things. So what are the major role in the Sridhat? First, about the quality management system.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:23:51]:
The quality management system in the whole company has to be standardized from production to dispatch. Second, food safety. All the has up all the food safety principles and everything you have properly managed. Third, you can say regulatory compliance. Our has up our food factory act. Our health and safety environment. All the regulatory compliances. I have to manage.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:24:13]:
Fourth, supplier management. Supplier management. All the suppliers. They are giving us the raw material, packaging material. I have to check them. I have to check do their audits. I have to go their premises. Like you can say supplier approval program and quality audits and inspections.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:24:29]:
Like we have multiple units. So we are making the internal audit plans. We are sending our team sometime I am going. So we are doing sometimes audit, sometimes surprise inspection. And plus next you can say continuous improvement. We have to promote the culture in the company. Product development. Not in the sugar industry.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:24:49]:
Dairy. We are doing some steps of product development, development and the 8th plan, training and education. We have to arrange obviously with the corporation and with the HR, human resource. We have to plan their external trainings. We have to plan their internal trainings. And the 9th part, you can say crisis, any recalls, any traceability things we have to check. Data analysis, all the data of the lab, testing, customer feedback. Everything we have to check.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:25:18]:
We have to get their trend analysis, where we are going up or down. And 11th position which was the major role. I have to involve in customer relation like sales have to bring the lead. But at the end all the compliances with the customer. I have to give them over their food security documents. They are giving checklist. I have to give them answers sometime. Online interviews with the customer.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:25:43]:
Fulfilling the requirement of customer is my core responsibility. And at the end cost management, improvement. But with the saving of the company, how we can improve it. So these are, you can say major ten to twelve roles which I am playing here and now in India private limited.
Zachary Cartwright [00:26:01]:
Yeah, that sounds actually really similar to my role and part of what I do working with the sales team, but really working to strengthen the relationships and work with other food scientists and people. So, sounds quite familiar. I did notice that you had an article recently in food Marketing and Technology magazine, I believe last month. What was that article about?
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:26:24]:
Actually even in the starting I told you I have written many articles in the recent food and marketing, food and fortech, food and drink industry and processed food industry, food and beverage news. And recently I was the speaker in Clean India. Clean India. It was arranged by the FSI and I was one of the speakers at the innovative. Yeah, let's talk about. You're talking about the food and marketing. My article was about the food safety, is food waste consuming us? The urgent need of change. So here I was talking about how much food waste we are producing, how we are controlling what type of food.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:27:07]:
I talk about the cause of food safety like sorry, cause of food waste like overproduction, poor harvesting, cosmetic confusion about expiration, insufficient supply chain, consumer behavior and infrastructure, lack of and some about the food service industries and what are their impact. I talk about the environmental implications, social implications and you can say economic implications and what we have to do, what we can do, what we have individual responsibility, what organizations can do, what government can do. So these all things I talk in the articles. You can go my LinkedIn profile and you can read multiple articles in detail. So we have because very less time. So we not kind of talk whole article here. But yeah, you can refer. It's good.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:27:57]:
I talk about the food. I also recently food culture today I just posted in LinkedIn about my pest control management system in food infotech, which I have written. So you can enjoy my reading articles and keep posting every week.
Zachary Cartwright [00:28:15]:
Yeah, we'll make sure to link this specific article that I mentioned so that our listeners can have access to it. I was wondering, in your opinion, how can food scientists in America better support food scientists in India and vice versa? How can we do a better job at working together?
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:28:35]:
First thing we measure things like we can, then knowledge exchange. We can exchange our knowledge like even I'm in India. I have subscribed many channels and many newsletters in the US, in the Canada. Yeah, I don't have to go there, maybe not now, maybe I don't have to do something there. But it's all about something like some knowledge or some incident came, lesson learned, you can learn what happened, what can happen to your industry. So it's just about knowledge exchange. Both the countries can share their knowledge, what happens to in India they can learn that will not happen to their industries. So knowledge exchange.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:29:22]:
Second, you can say technology transfer, we can transfer our technologies, what best we have and what best you have we can exchange. And another thing you can say exchange programs like we are also doing just like this is our program exchange, we are exchanging our knowledge and our professional, our background. So this is also going to exchange programs. And we can say joint initiative is the major concern nowadays food security and addressing our regional challenges because both countries have different type of cultures. And what in your culture, what you have challenges in our culture, what we have challenges which I talk already like street food contamination. So other countries also can talk about that. Next we can say support to food startup because you can see the food startup is the very well known grown business in India. Also people can open their business in very less amount of.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:30:29]:
So we have to support them because when they are opening the business they don't know about the food safety and they don't want to invest in food safety. But as a social responsible person we can share our knowledge and things. Next, conferences, seminars, webinars we can attend online so we can attend when we're there, we have to attend. And next you can say advocacy of food safety and quality, a joint advocate with a food security at the international levels so everyone can participate. So these are the things I think we can do to make better report.
Zachary Cartwright [00:31:11]:
Yeah, I think that's a really good list. And among all of those things, I really think that the partnerships between our two countries, or between at least food scientists in our countries are strengthening more and more, especially with conferences. I plan to be there at some point at a conference myself and really looking forward to that. What's next for you? Looking down the road at this point, you've accomplished a lot, you've won some really significant awards and helped companies get those certificates. What's next?
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:31:43]:
As of my current role, my sugar industry, you can say I told you in the morning, starting food safety came very late in India. The rules and regulations came, but it released and it's come to the public very late. The rules and aggregation came late. So other industries also went to that level at very late. So still there is many industries even in my October of my company, our all units not yet certified in food safety because obviously it's not one day like we can do some magic and it will be certified. We have to set the system and we have to do the infrastructure. So still our 20 30% units are certified and we are still doing one by one. This is my toughest job, which we are doing.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:32:33]:
And same system we can show to our customer and so we can add more to more customer, we can give benefit to the company. And second, this is the professional. My personal goal is, see, I have to make social figure like food safety. I am doing food safety. It's my God, Grace. Food safety is not my job. Food safety is my passion. So what I am doing in the passion, I'm doing the office.
Ashutosh Jaiswal [00:33:04]:
But same after the office hours. I am writing, I'm speaking, I'm talking to the people, I'm connecting to the people. Those who are more better, expert, those who are lower. I am just expansioning myself as a social figure in the food safety. So ultimately, you can say my vision, a positive change in the food industry and championing the cause of safe, high quality, sustainable food production. And we can solve the societal issues and good environmental responsibility. Because in India, I believe we still have to do lot of the things we have in the food safety, in the government and in the private sector both. So we have to do lot.
Zachary Cartwright [00:33:45]:
Yeah. Thank you. And Ashutosh, thank you so much for your time and for dealing with our time difference and figuring out a way to get together. A lot of fun getting to know you. And it's pretty cool that we can connect. We live so far apart, but our passions are really similar. And I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do and how you become more of a social figure in the world of food safety. And I think this, even though you've done so much, this is just a start.
Zachary Cartwright [00:34:11]:
And there's a lot more that can be done. You listed a whole list of things, so let's see if we can work on them together. I'm Zachary Cartwright. This is Water In Food. Find this podcast on Apple iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.