July 24, 2020
IAS officer and new CEO of FSSAI, Arun Singhal informs new ways of testing and new regulations at the food regulator with many reforms underway.
Modi government, under the guidance of the country’s apex food regulator, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), its new CEO, Arun Singhal is planning to increase the quality checks on milk, honey, edible oil, meat and poultry.
From 1987 IAS batch, Singhal an IAS officer of the Uttar Pradesh cadre, was appointed in FSSAI in May as a part of a administrative rearrangement by the Modi government. Singal has earlier served as special secretary in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and FSSAI falls under the domain of the same ministry.
Since his first talk after his appointment, Singhal informed media that apart from checks, FSSAI will identify more food products that are susceptible to adulteration, identify the hotspots where this adulteration takes place and work upon it as soon as possible.
“Five food products which are susceptible to adulteration are now under the strict vigilance of the FSSAI. These products are milk, honey, edible oil, meat and poultry. More products will be added to the high-risk food items,” said Singhal.
“We will increase the scope of market surveillance to identify hot-spot areas of adulteration and conduct national-level surveys for milk, vegetable oils and all other high risk commodities,” he said, adding that the timeline for these surveys has not yet been decided.
New ways of testing, new regulations
Singhal said the FSSAI is focusing on periodic inspections and third-party audits, and conducting focused checks to ensure safety and quality of food products available in the market.
“We have approved 30 rapid food testing kits and devices to ensure faster, better and cheaper real-time testing of food at the field level. With this, samples will not be required to be sent to the laboratories every time for testing,” he added.
Singal also details that to increase the access of imported food items in India, FSSAI is set to come out with new regulations for imported food products. Pre-packaged food such as frozen food, which is packed in a box, can or any other container is an area of major concentration.
“Under the new provisions, pre-packaged food items can be moved out of ports provisionally, pending test reports. Many more labelling defects can be rectified at the ports, and earlier delays in sampling would be significantly brought down. All these changes would help to facilitate imports,” Singhal said.
Singhal also said that the core work on various regulatory reforms is already underway. For instance, ‘ease of doing businesses’, FSSAI is simplifying and streamlining the processing of applications for licensing and registration.
“IT-enabled e-services are being developed for improvement in existing portals of licensing and registration, imports and testing mechanisms by making them more user-friendly for food businesses. To build the culture of self-compliance, FSSAI has created an online ecosystem for training of food handlers,” the IAS officer said.
The FSSAI is also in the process of strengthening its import clearance system for the betterment of the disturbed economy.
“The idea is to ensure efficient and effective import control, post clearance surveillance, robust monitoring and simultaneously reducing the transaction time, cost and physical interface with importers,” Singhal said.
The FSSAI also plans to focus on improving infrastructure, including “strengthening of food testing laboratories, development of new National Food Laboratories (NFLs) at Chennai and Mumbai, along with investment in training and capacity building of lab personnel and field staff”, he added.