Feb 22, 2020
India has still not addressed all the pertinent issues of food safety and nutrition, but the good thing is that the food industry has “correctly diagnosed the disease and created a treatment regimen,” informed the lFood Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) chief executive Pawan Agarwal, who is at the end of his tenure.
Food safety needs to be on the top to make India the food hub of India. For this Indian government funding on food safety has been raised about five times with 500 new positions being created at FSSAI but still the food regulator appears slower than the others. Hence it is important to be ahead. Agarwal ambushed that this is not like a sprint, but more like a marathon, and asked the food industry to reinforce food safety and transparency.
The regulator is expected to soon introduce new food labelling norms, a move that has the Rs 2.3-lakh crore foods industry worried. Agarwal, who has moved into the role of secretary in the consumer affairs ministry, said in the letter—which is also addressed to other stakeholders in the foods industry—that the FSSAI has “disrupted the conventional role of a regulator to enabler” and adopted the food system approach.