With rising concern about delay in completion of product approval process, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has decided to speed it up by going in for computerisation of registration and disposal of application for the purpose.
The process is likely to get completed by February 2014 and thereafter the applicants could check the status of their application, according to K Chandramouli, chairman, FSSAI. He was speaking while taking part in a CII (Confederation of Indian Industry)-hosted programme on food safety here recently.
“We’re in the process of making registration and disposal of application for product approval online and in next couple of months we’ll be able to make it a reality,” he stated.
He said that the issue of product approval has been one of the several issues, the Authority was grappling with for sometime now.
“The Authority has asked suggestions from the industry and (now) the product approval process is by and large summed up. The heartening part is that the product approval exercise is getting online formally in the next couple of months. The startoff month is Feb’14,” he stated, while acknowledging that the industry was facing problem with the product approval process.
Meanwhile, Chandramouli told categorically that there shall be no change and extension in the final deadline for the Food Business Operators (FBOs), small, medium or big for getting licence and registration. The deadline is nearing – February 4, 2014.
According to FSSAI, there are approximately 5.5 crore FBOs in the country. While calling it a big challenge to get licensing and registration done across the country in due time as majority players are small, the FSSAI chairman said that all concerned need to understand their responsibility and be taken on board to accomplish the huge task.
On this issue, he informed that lot of states are doing well in getting licensing and registration done, particularly Uttar Pradesh. “We need to accelerate the process to meet the deadline,” he said.
On the Codex front, Chandramouli said that India’s say had increased in various fora of Codex and the country made its presence felt with improved participation. He also welcomed setting up of Codex Committee on Spices and Herbs by describing it as a “feather in India’s cap.” He, however, pointed out that the Authority had huge responsibility of checking food imports to the country. Earlier, the imports were not checked thoroughly, and even in the absence of labelling norms there was little information about the food product that was imported. There were reports indicated that how cheating was done when products like chocolate having more than 30% vegetable oil fat in it were imported.
“To check and regulate food imports, the authority has opened its offices in all major importing points across the country. We’ve offices in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Cochin from where the food imports could be regulated in terms of labelling and unsafe food,” he stated, while not ruling out the possibility of more such offices. He also said that the FSSAI was in talks with the ministry to amend the FSS Act so that the various notifications become part of it.
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