FSSAI HR and Capacity Needs to Grow

India has taken a new and different step in bringing change in food safety culture. There was demand from the industry and many others for a single unified law for food safety. Even though the Food Safety and Standards Act 2006 (FSSA 2006) completed 10 years last month the Act actually came into effect from August 5, 2011, five years after it was passed, following the setting up of FSSAI which framed the rules and regulations under the Act.

- Milind Kokje

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FS-SAI) is embarked on a new journey for making food safety a culture. It has planned various programmes to spread the culture of food safety wherever food is consumed, from home to schools to canteens to restaurants to roadside ‘thelas’. While spreading culture of food safety in the society is one of FSSAI’s mandate, its other mandate includes varied regulatory steps like setting standards, risk assessment, checking and inspection, approvals and enforcement to ensure that only safe food reaches the consumer.

For all its regulatory work, FSSAI requires large contingent of people who are trained in their scientific work and having working legal knowledge within the organisation as well as with the food commissioners’ offices or Food and Drug Administrations (FDA) in all the states. They are involved in visiting the processing and production sites, checking & inspecting, collecting samples if needed. However, the general feeling and experience of stakeholders is that the enforcement agencies like FDAs are operating with far below required capacity of people and also laboratories. To ensure effective enforcement of food safety the enforcement structure needs to be strengthened.