1. Introduction
Did you know? Every year almost one out of ten
people fall ill due foodborne diseases. WHO
estimated children less than 5 years accounted 1/3 of
death from foodborne disease i.e. 420000 deaths
globally. What is Food Safety? It is about of
handling, storing, preparing and transporting food to
prevent the possibility of contamination to ensure
food is safe at the time of consumption.
Food safety is critical because results are enhanced
public health, particularly for vulnerable communities
(Children, Pregnant women, Elderly people, and
immunosuppressed people), and also increase
confidence for international trade.
The concept of food safety is not very new approach
to India. Our ancestors were performing food safety
practices century ago like cooking food at boiling
temperature, pickling vegetables/ fruits, storing food
items in an airtight container are some of the
examples for it. However, until 2006 food safety not
seen as a concept to safeguard consumer or public
health. Prevention of food adulteration was a
concept in place to regulate the food industry to
safeguard consumer or public health.
Due to globalisation, consumer demand, and
complexity in food industry food adulteration
concept merely helped consumer safety due to it
reactive approach. Therefore need of proactive and
self -compliance approach need to ensure safety and
FSSAI – decade in India
August 29, 2016
Salient Features of FSSAI – Food
Safety Standard Act -2006:
It is the main law for the regulation of food
products and formulation and enforcement of food
safety standards in India. It consolidate various
older laws, rules and regulations like Prevention of
Food Adulteration Act, 1954 Fruit Products Order,
1955, Meat Food Products Order, 1973, Vegetable
Oil Products (Control) Order, 1947, Edible Oils
Packaging (Regulation) Order 1988, Solvent
Extracted Oil, De- Oiled Meal and Edible Flour
(Control) Order, 1967, Milk and Milk Products
Order, 1992 under the umbrella of FSSAI. The
standard established for the article of food and to
regulate their manufacturing, storage, and
distribution, sales, and import to ensure safe and
wholesome food for human consumptions.
Ever since, the enforcement of Food Safety
Standard Act -2006, food industries is progressively
developing their own standards both in terms of
operation and infrastructure to comply with legal
requirements. Further, the sense of importance
much more created due to various food safety
issues in recent past like Monosodium Glutamate,
Milk adulteration, and Potassium bromate.
Progress of FSSAI:
During the course of ten years (a decade), there are
numerous effort developed like consumer
awareness program, product approval protocol,
labelling and nutritional claim, import regulation,
and etc., for effective implementation for the
purpose of regulation- safe and wholesome food
for human consumption.

2. Although, having a legal framework in place there
are still few glitches for effective implementation.
One of the major reason for that is the insufficient
resources like human resource and quality
government laboratories. In fact, today's date the
number of quality government laboratories is far less
than compared with people in the country. There is
also need to upgrade the infrastructure in most of
our government laboratories.
Secondly, in terms of human resource, most of the
states operate far below the desired capacity of food
and dry administration officer. Due to the above
resulted in a collaborative effort with state, private
sector addresses the challenges of food safety in the
country.
Pathway forward
In order to improve the overall impression and
effectiveness of implementation- FSSAI need to
touch grey area such as:
- Upgrade government laboratory quality
- Training facilities of inspection officer and
modernization
- Conduct regular inspection of testing of
products through ensuring that only right
quality product is sold in the market
- Collaborative effort Centre and state,
improve co-ordination among them.
- Increase human capital
- Improve on consumer awareness
Once, FSSAI addresses all of above and put in place,
only then we can see progress improvements in food
safety in our country.
Written by
Baskaran.G.