The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India is all set up to roll on the meeting demands of public expectations to enforce hygienic, Nutritious and safe food supply to people through Safe Food Sampling and Inspection system.
FSSAI, the food regulator of India today, 12th September 2017 introduced a nationwide online platform and urged every state to adopt this system so as to eliminate inconsistency in food quality and make food safety-officers reliable and accountable.
The e-commerce based ‘FoSCoRIS’ system will help in verifying compliance with food safety and hygiene standards by food businesses as per the government protocol.
Through this web run system, all the data of sampling, inspection and test result oriented information will be released on a nationwide IT platform seamlessly by all the officials.
Mr. Pawan Kumar Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI said that FSSAI was mechanizing hard to value add the customers’ expectations about consumers safety and quality food items and ideology was to introduce a technology which is objective as well as credible. As many as 135 FSSAI – authorized food laboratory have been established under private sectors name along with 90 unit owned by governments and central agencies.
Every state has been asked to appoint a nodal officer for the same purpose and send them the information about every concerned officer of the state food authority for collaborating with FoSCoRIS.
Initially, the FSSAI said, it has decided to bear the cost of rental plans for first three months to a maximum of Rs 500 per month per connection to first ten states and UTs.
The FSSAI chief said that a new regulatory arrangement was being put in place to support the enforcement of regulations. There is still a huge challenge, he said, of meeting the rising expectations of the people who are now more conscious about health and wellness. We hope we can move towards ensuring the trust of the people in the food products available in the market, he added.
“This system will give a clear picture to the FSSAI on the real-time basis and helps eliminate any discrepancy, hence inspection is accountable,” the regulator said in a letter written to states. The system will ease out the process of sample collection, make it transparent and traceable and controls the quality of compliances, it said.
With a vision of expansion, a “Yellow Book” has been released exclusively for children to make them learn how to eat right, with three categories for different age groups. “Yellow Book” comprises of a various range of topics which have been formulated after research, discussions, consultations and extensive engagement with the partners.
