The Food Safety Department in Tiruppur district has undertaken a campaign to bring on board eateries and restaurants, which sell fried food items in large quantities, under the Repurpose Used Cooking Oil (RUCO) initiative of Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) for collection and conversion of used cooking oil to biodiesel.
In tune with the FSSAI guidelines, the Department has identified eateries and restaurants using more than 100 litres of oil for frying, for the purpose of maintaining a stock register and ensuring that the used cooking oil is handed over to only registered collection agencies. The FSSAI believes that a robust ecosystem for conversion and collection is rapidly growing in India and will soon reach a sizable scale.
Health hazards
Highlighting the slogans ‘Eat Right Tiruppur’, ‘Eat Right India’ at recent awareness programme on ‘Food Fortification and RUCO’, B. Vijayalalithambikai, Designated Officer for Food Safety and Drug Administration Department, explained the health hazards arising from consuming food items made with reused oil.
As per the FSSAI regulations, the maximum permissible limits for Total Polar Compounds (TPC) have been set at 25%, beyond which the cooking oil is unsafe for consumption.
A higher level of TPC in cooking oil leads to health issues.
The awareness exercise was meant to prevent harmful ways of discarding used oil in a way that it chokes drains and sewerage systems. The FSSAI considers used cooking oil as the most reasonable feedstock for biodiesel production, and advocates purchase of used oil, officials said.
Restrictions on reusing cooking oil took effect on March 1, 2019. The new rule of FSSAI, brought into effect as per Section 16 (5) of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, prohibits eateries and restaurants from using the same batch of cooking oil more than three times. FSSAI had asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Departments in each State to ensure that all eateries using more than 50 litres of oil per day comply with the rule.
