FSSAI’s risk assessment cell for easy food recall to become a centre soon

FSSAI has established a National Risk Assessment Cell at its headquarters here to ascertain risk areas of concern. This has been done to strengthen the food safety ecosystem that would eventually help the apex food regulator to deal with the crisis related to food safety involving situations like food recall.

Pawan Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI, revealed in a statement in a newsletter of FSSAI that this would eventually develop into a National Food Safety Risk Assessment Centre. “A National Risk Assessment Cell has been established to assess risks in areas of concern and I would like to inform that this cell would eventually be strengthened and developed into a full-fledged National Food Safety and Risk Assessment Centre,” he stated.

He pointed out that the body had created a new division for implementation of the GHP and GMP measures by the FBOs. He stated, “FSSAI has also created a new division, Food Safety Management System (FSMS) Division for the consistent implementation of the preventive measures i.e., Good Manufacturing Practices, Good Hygiene Practices & Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Point in various kinds of food businesses.”

Informing about labs, Agarwal stated that 16 new NABL accredited labs were notified by FSSAI recently.

Besides, FSSAI had set up seven new scientific panels to speed up the process of setting standards along with adoption of Codex standards. In order to ensure food safety across the nation, new key regulations relating to recall procedures, traceability, product approval, claims, food fortification, and school canteens are being finalised. “We have recently released nine new manuals of method of analysis of foods,” he said.

Meanwhile, FSSAI Mobile App, launched in March 2016, is receiving citizen’s trust nationwide and to further enhance this, an elaborate system is now being developed such as to directly inform the concerns to the regulatory staff at the field level. Also, the organisational structure of FSSAI has been strengthened and a system of team-based approach has been initiated for seamless flow of information across various divisions, according to him.