Face-saving for Modi govt? Controversy over FSSAI's U-turn on A2 milk

Unfortunately, some of the ‘wow’ factors can boomerang, too.

FSSAI advisory

On August 21, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) issued an advisory prohibiting the sale of milk and milk products on the basis of A1 and A2 type differentiation.

It reminded food businesses that the food standards and food additives regulations don’t allow claims A2 claims to be made for milk and milk products.

E-commerce sites were told to promptly remove such claims from their websites. The others were given up to six months to exhaust their stock of printed labels with such claims.

But the advisory was withdrawn five days later for “further consultation and engagement with stakeholders”. So, what happened?

Behind the U-turn

The person who forced the U-turn is Venugopal Badaravada, a native of Andhra Pradesh based in Varanasi and said to be engaged in the conservation and promotion of indigenous cattle breeds.

Last September, he was nominated as a farmer’s representative to the board of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR).

Badaravada is a central advisory committee member of the Rashtriya Gokul Mission, a programme launched in December 2014 for the conservation and development of indigenous bovine breeds. As a Modi fan, he has attended the Prime Minister’s rallies at Madison Square Garden in New York (2014), Howdy Modi in Houston (2020), where Modi exclaimed, ‘Ab ki baar, Trump Sarkar,’ and Namaste Trump in Ahmedabad (2020).

However, a veteran in the dairy industry disagreed with the turnaround in the advisory.

"The FSSAI was right in issuing the advisory so that consumers are not misled into paying handsome money for A2 milk and milk products that had no added health value," said Narayan Hegde, who has been for the past 40 years with the Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation (BAIF) in senior management positions, including as its trustee.

BAIF's activities

Pune-based BAIF, now called BAIF Development Research Centre, was started in the 1970s by Mahatma Gandhi’s disciple Manibhai Desai to pull small farmers out of poverty via milk production.

These farmers did not have enough land to gain from Green Revolution technologies. Since the cattle they possessed were non-descript indigenous breeds with low milk yields, BAIF tried to improve the genetic stock by cross breeding the animals with high-yielding indigenous cattle or exotic ones like Jersey and Holstein Friesian.

It pioneered the delivery of frozen semen of high-yielding cattle in canisters to rural areas for artificial insemination.

Harmful or not

Cow milk contains 3.4 per cent protein, of which 30-35 per cent is beta-casein. A1 and A2 are common genetic variants of beta-casein.

The 67th position on the beta-casein gene is a mutation point that can lead to the two variants: A1 and A2.

Since the 1990s, there have been many studies suggesting that protein fragments released when A1 milk is digested trigger bodily responses that could cause or aggravate type 1 diabetes, diseases of the heart and blood vessels, neurological disorders, or even sudden death in infants.

Rush for A2

A book published in 2008, Devil in the Milk, linking A1 milk with diabetes, caused a scare in New Zealand and Australia and a rush for A2 milk, explained Hegde.

That is when the New Zealand authorities requested the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to review the scientific studies on A1 milk and pronounce it safe or otherwise.

In an article in a scientific journal in 2019, Hegde said EFSA found no evidence of A1 milk being harmful to humans and so it did not advise caution. The New Zealand authorities accepted this.

But subsequent studies (after the EFSA decision of 2009) kept raising doubts about the health impact of A1 milk. Most of these were sponsored by a New Zealand company that was interested in promoting A2 milk, Hegde said.

Modi brings A2 milk to people

The FSSAI was bold in issuing the advisory but it made the government look rather foolish.

Radha Mohan Singh, as Union Agriculture Minister in the Modi government’s first term, had issued a poster claiming that the milk of indigenous cow breeds was better as it was A2 milk. It was good for the heart, blood circulation and for those suffering from diabetes or neurological disorders, said the poster.

The poster said the Prime Minster had for the first time brought A2 milk to the people and the government had given Odisha and Karnataka ₹2 crore each for marketing it.

In December 2016, the Prime Minister launched Amul Deshi A2 Cow Milk, while inaugurating the organisation's dairy unit at Deesa in Gujarat’s Banaskantha district. He spoke highly of the milk of the indigenous Kankrej and Gir breeds in A2 and even recommended it for health-conscious people and for children suffering from malnutrition.

Potential benefits

In February 2018, the government said in reply to a Rajya Sabha member’s question that under the ICAR’s National Fund Project for Delineating Beta Casein Variants in Indian cows and potential health benefits of A1A2 milk, an ICAR institute in Karnal, Haryana, was doing a study on the impact of A1A1, A1A2 and A2A2 milk on mice.

In reply to a question by a Lok Sabha member in 2016, the government said that "as per the limited observations of ICAR”, Indian indigenous cattle and buffalo breeds have genes that produce A2 beta casein.

But exotic and crossbreds can also have the A2 gene.

Genetic research

Hegde cited an Indian review paper on A1 and A2 milk published in 2009 which found that 22 per cent of Holstein-Friesian bulls had inherited A1 genes from both their parents, 45 per cent were A1A2 and 33 per cent had A2A2 genes.

The researchers had done a sample study of 618 animals, indigenous, exotic and cross-bred. In the Jersey breed, 60 per cent of the bulls had A1A2 genes and 37.5 per cent A2A2 genes. Among crossbred bulls, only one per cent had A1A1 genes, while about 50 per cent had A2A2 genes and 39 per cent of the bulls were A1A2.

Hegde said people of this country have been drinking milk from crossbred animals for more than five decades without reporting adverse health effects. Europeans have been drinking crossbred cattle milk for a longer time but there is no evidence linking higher milk consumption with a greater incidence of diabetes or heart disease.

He pointed out that if the PM made claims about A2 milk, the scientists who misled him should be held responsible.