Places of worship cold to taking food safety licence for offerings

Sri Padmanabhaswamy, Guruvayur, Sabarimala temples take registration; majority of other Hindu shrines, churches and mosques ignore the FSSAI directive

KOCHI: The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s (FSSAI) directive to the churches, mosques and temples in the state to take food safety licence or registration to distribute ‘prasadam’ and offerings has received a lukewarm response. Though the state food safety department which started implementing the ‘Blissful Hygienic Offering to God’ (Bhog) campaign a year ago, only 1,652 PoWs (places of worship) have taken the registration from the department.

As per the rough estimate prepared by the department, over 15,000 worship centres in the state serve food to the devotees as ‘prasadam’. “The Bhog drive is an initiative by FSSAI to encourage places of worship to adopt and maintain food safety and hygiene as well as convey food safety messages through such places to the people to follow as responsible citizens. Though we have approached religious heads to bring the PoWs under the Food Safety and Standards Act, they are reluctant to take the registration. Most of them didn’t want to come under the radar of the food safety department,” said an official.

As per the information sourced from the department, only religious centres in Ernakulam and Thiruvananthapuram have taken the move positively. Of the 1,652 centres that registered, Ernakulam district received registration of nearly 200 and Thiruvananthapuram 320 centres. The major worship centres such as Sri Padmanabhaswamy, Guruvayur and Sabarimala temples have taken the registration.

“Since we can’t initiate any penal action against the authorities, the implementation can be done only through the regular campaign. There are some religious organisations like Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church which have positively received the move. The Mar Thoma Church has taken the registration for all its churches. We are working hard to implement Bhog in all PoWS,” said Alex K.Isaac, Assistant Commissioner of Food Safety, Thiruvananthapuram.

Meanwhile, the Food Safety Commissioner has directed all district collectors to convene a meeting of the representatives of all worship centres to make them aware of the rules. “We will convene a meeting of the stakeholders on February 5 to discuss the implementation of Bhog. The authorities can take the registration at the meeting,” said Ernakulam Collector S Suhas.

The FSSAI introduced the project after 13 people died and 130 others fell ill after consuming ‘prasadam’ from a temple in Karnataka.

Dr Rathan U Kelkar, Commissioner of Food Safety, was unavailable for comments.

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