Mr Arun Singhal CEO FSSAI shared his vision of the Food eco system in the country. He considers FSSAI to be a continuously evolving organization across the food value chain . It makes standards for ensuring quality assurance and building state of the art technology testing infrastructure.
The regulator focusses on capacity building of human resources which strengthen their compliance and surveillance efforts. Under the coveted Eat Right initiative the regulator enables support to FBOs and help in generation of public awareness also. Also read Milk quality testing is high in priority list of FSSAI : Arun Singhal CEO FSSAI
Food-o-copia on the lines of Pharm-a-copia
The Food Authority is planning to bring out a comprehensive regulatory document called “Food-‘O’-copoeia”. It would be much like the Indian Pharma-Copoeia. The Food-‘O’-copoeia would be a collection of food category-wise monographs . It would be a single point reference for all applicable standards for a specific product category. It will be specifying complete standards, labelling and claim requirements for that product category. Product specific packaging requirements and other regulatory provisions will also be described here.
The monograph would provide the list of methods which has to be followed while analysing the specific food product category. This will contain a total of 16 product category specific monographs . One more monograph which would contain all the general requirements to be met by all the food product categories. Also read Cheese will no more be Cheezzy : FSSAI amends regulation on analogues and testing of ghee purity
Eat Right School for school children and Eat Right Toolkit for people at the grass-roots level have already been launched. Eat right campus is meant for the colleges , workplace and institutions. The Hygiene Rating scheme for Restaurants and Catering Establishments, Sweet and Meat Shops has been commenced for the food service establishments.
Fortification is being promoted by notification of standards for 5 staples, +F logo for easy identification by consumers. The focus is to scale-up these initiatives and increase the scope of activities under each of these.
Ease of Doing business initiatives
FSSAI is also working towards various regulatory reforms for enhancing efficiency with ‘Ease of doing Business’ . It will include simplification in the processing of applications for licensing and registration for FBOs.
To build capacities of food businesses on food safety, FSSAI has initiated Food Safety Training and Certification (FoSTaC) . It is a unique program to ensure a trained and certified Food Safety Supervisor (FSS) on each food business premise. Several benchmarking and certification schemes to improve food safety and hygiene standards are in place.
FSSAI is working to reduce the consignment clearance time at the port to facilitate the import trade. It also includes building capacities of customs officials and importers to ensure seamless import clearances.
Food safety Mitra and Foscos
FSSAI has recently launched an initiative of Food Safety Mitra to help FBOs with queries related to licensing and registration. These professionally trained and certified Mitras by FSSAI shall assist FBO in their compliances on online portals of FSSAI. As on date, more than 9142 participants have been enrolled under the scheme.
FSSAI has recently launched its cloud based, upgraded new food safety compliance online platform called Food Safety Compliance System (FoSCoS, URL – https://foscos.fssai.gov.in). It will replace the existing FLRS (URL – https://foodlicensing.fssai.gov.in).
Excerpts from the interview of Mr Arun Singhal with Team FMT magazine Also read Mr Arun Singhal IAS appointed as Chief executive Officer, FSSAI
