Third party Laboratory testing of finished products as per FSSAI License regulations

We all were awakened by a notification on 15th January 2023 which is as follows: Order – Manufacturing (including Repacker and Relabellers) to upload or link mandatory lab testing reports ( Six monthly) on FoSCos – Reg.

- Shashank Joshi, GM Operations, Priyanka Kataria

This notification says the following main thing - It mentions all the conditions of the FSSAI license which was present earlier in 2011 however, FSSAI never has asked for an uploading of the testing reports.

License condition is as follows: Condition of license Number 12 (Annexure -2) of Schedule 2 of FSS (Licensing and Registration) of Food Business, 2011 specifies that Food Business operator shall “Ensure Testing of relevant Chemical and/or Microbiological contaminants in Food products in accordance with these regulations as frequently as required on the basis of historical data and risk assessment to ensure production and delivery of safe food through own or NABL Accredited /FSSAI notified labs at least once in Six months.

What is the meaning of this?

It has a simple meaning that in every six months, we should get our finished product analyzed from an NABL and FSSAI Notified lab according to the chemical and Microbiological parameters mentioned against the product category in FSSAI.

Is this the new requirement?

This is not a new requirement and it has been there since 2011 and marked in each license.

Then why it is not followed by FBO seriously? As there is no knowledge of how to do this testing, from where to do this testing? What are the parameters to be tested?

A lot of questions come to mind and we all get confused. Here is the small writeup on that. As per this we need to get following as practice in our yearly calendar:

Risk analysis and check