In a bid to have international standards, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has come up with a new scheme. Now, the FSSAI will engage reputed professionals and individual consultants to formulate new policies.
In a bid to have international standards, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), under the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has come up with a new scheme. Now, the FSSAI will engage reputed professionals and individual consultants to formulate new policies.
The FSSAI will empanel expert resources that will develop international technical standards to be implemented for food safety.
"We are looking at strengthening the FSSAI activities. We are going to engage experts to contribute to the development of international technical standards for food sanitary and phtyosanitary standards. We have to focus on collecting and collating data regarding food consumption incidence and prevalence of biological risks, contaminants in food, residues of various contaminants in food products, identification of emerging risks and introduction of rapid alert system," said a senior FSSAI official.
"We aim at creating an information network across the country so that the public, consumers and panchayats receive rapid reliable and objective information about food safety and issues of concern. We want to provide training programmes for persons who are involved or intend to get involved in food businesses," the official said. Food safety remains an important issue in India. According to a study done by the Department of Home Science, Institute of Home Economics, University of Delhi, in India, there have been hardly any studies to evaluate the food hygiene and safety implementation in the catering organisation.
The study published in the recent issue of International Journal for Innovative Research in Science & Technology states that there is also a serious threat of microbial contamination of food due to poor food hygiene and safety knowledge of food handlers. In India it is envisaged that in the future there would be a serious focus on risk assessment, early warning/rapid alert situations as the exporters of agro products and processed food have been facing the stringent food safety standards in the developed country markets.
The scientific reports on the outbreak of foodborne diseases in India in 1980-2009 indicated that a total of 37 outbreaks, involving 3,485 persons, were due to food poisoning. The FSSAI had also floated a scheme to engage central, state government agencies, consumers' organisations, NGOs, etc, working in the area of food safety for undertaking Information, Education and Communication activities.
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