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Food Fortification Initiative: Venkat Subramanian
The Food Fortification Initiative (FFI) is far more focused on stimulating macro-level change and sees the future of food fortification depending on industrial adoption of high-quality fortification. This perspective is further elucidated in the summary of conversations with Scott Montgomery, director of FFI. On rice fortification: In this conversation, we investigated the concerns FFI has with the extrusion technology used by some development agencies. The primary concern is that these fortified rice kernels are of poor quality due to business decisions guided by cost effectiveness to use cheap extrusion equipment sourced from China. He points out that the $30,000 equipment can’t possibly match the quality of a $400,000 alternative. The primary concerns with quality surround aesthetic quality (the appearance of the grain, whose shape, texture, and colour may differ from unfortified grains and be avoided by the consumer) and functional quality (the grains may not retain micronutrients in absorbable form). The aesthetic concern is mostly relevant to open market channels and the public distribution system(PDS) and should not affect prepared foods (such as in the Midday Meal scheme) where preparation and cooking are strictly controlled. On wheat flour fortification: Although it does not present quality issues, wheat flour fortification is difficult due to supply chains, principally the reliance on local chakki mills. The open market wheat market is highly competitive, without incentives for fortification (even at 0.25 INR / kg, $0.004/kg). Furthermore, shelf life of centrally produced flour remains an issue, in part due to the disincentives to sell at lower moisture content (say 10 percent rather than 12 percent) given that it is sold by weight yet spoils faster when wet. Venkat suggested that fortifying one ton per hour yields a great story about someone getting fortified food, but that’s smaller than the smallest industrial mills he works in. His focus is on scaling to 10 times that capacity. Smaller pilots help to shape regulation and show it’s not harmful, but the scale and capital available is substantially higher in industry. Even so, industrial fortification efforts have been highly neglected by existing actors. FFI thinks Fortify Health could contribute by:
Food Fortification Initiative: Scott Montgomery FFI has been largely focused on advocacy for large-scale fortification reform, such as the recent adoption of technical standards for fortification by FSSAI. It has been working to advance industry partnerships, but without ultimate success to date. They aim to expand access to fortified foods at scale through the open market or PDS. Their India operations are presently limited to an annual budget of approximately $150,000. Their team in India includes two principal members and a consultant. FFI also carried out an in-depth review of the industry and performed a state-level analysis in order to suggest priorities for action. Scott also provided an extensive introduction into the food landscape in India, which included data on consumption of different forms of fortifiable foods across the country, and the different processing pathways they take. He also provided thorough background on the state-level analyses performed and the prioritization matrix used. These states were then scored on the basis of health impact and ease of implementation for each food/strategy. Although we will not provide a comprehensive summary here, PDS flour fortification in Maharashtra or Madhya Pradesh emerged as high priority targets. FFI’s primary limitations are staff and money, and they seek to add value in large-scale strategy and supply chain design rather than in further small-scale demonstration projects. FFI thinks Fortify Health could contribute by:
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