PANAJI
She had made headlines six years ago by her dutiful action but instead of earning accolades, all she got was brickbats and a string of 'punishment postings' until she attained the age of superannuation and quietly retired from service.
Eva Fernandes, had rocked the State's establishment and earned the ire of the political bosses when she dutifully sealed several trucks carrying fish at Margao's wholesale market when tests she conducted in pre-dawn hours found impermissible amounts of formaldehyde in the samples.
Six years later, Fernandes no longer serves in the FDA, having superannuated "long back" in the words of one of her colleagues, an unsung hero who woke up the public consciousness to the real threat of the use of formalin to preserve fish by rogue traders.
Many would say, that the controversy over the alleged use of formalin as a preservative is a dead and forgotten issue. Yet, the threat of the carcinogenic solution of formaldehyde, used normally to preserve human bodies after death, threatening people's health through the fish they consume is real.
In other States, notably Tamil Nadu, Assam, West Bengal and two North-Eastern states of Nagaland and Meghalaya, formalin in fish continues to keep their food safety officials busy and cracking the whip till date.
Here, at the start of the current year in January, the Bombay High Court at Goa, had disposed all the public interest litigations (PILs) related to the 2018 'formalin-in-fish' episode with a telling order: 'Formalin in fish impermissible.'
It directed Goa's FDA chief and all food safety officers to ensure “strict action” as per law to prevent use of formalin to preserve fish.
To overcome the problem of certain species of fish naturally producing formaldehyde, the High Court bench comprising the Chief Justice Devendra Upadhyay and Justice Mahesh Sonak, said that the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India notification of January 11, 2023, which prescribes the limits of formaldehyde in fish be followed to the tee.
Meanwhile, the whole episode surrounding the 2018 controversy when Fernandes took the action quite literally exposes how in the bureaucracy or government service, merit and conscientious work hardly pays.
How else then can one explain a situation where Fernandes quite literally got banished to obscure corridors of the FDA while the scientific officer who had produced the report with the blooper certifying that formalin content was "within permissible limits" and therefore the samples tested by Fernandes safe for consumption, got the all clear for his probation as 'Senior Scientific Officer' and therefore 'confirmed' in his post, less than a year later?
Fernandes was the "designated officer" to ensure food safety in South Goa District at the time when she sealed the trucks based on the reports of her tests.
But as is often the case, subsequent events on that fateful day saw the political executive intervene and the then FDA director Dr Jyoti Sardesai (now also retired) reprimanding Fernandes after ordering a repeat test on fish from the sealed trucks at the in-house laboratory at FDA headquarters in Bambolim.
Same fish and two different reports by officers of the same agency -- FDA -- but it didn't take much time for the government of the day to go by the second report which said 'all is well'.
Worse, Fernandes was abruptly removed as the "designated officer" but when she moved the Human Rights Commission alleging harrassment, it took a U-turn and repeated the action exactly a year later.
Ever since, Fernandes never returned to any position of authority dealing with food safety in the FDA until she retired, making her an unsung hero, who awakened the consciousness of the Goan public towards food safety like no other FDA officer has perhaps done before her.
