NEW DELHI: The Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) wants to set up some 24 food safety institutes in India backed by corporates, to ensure that consumers get safe, quality food.
For this, the regulator is already in discussions with many food companies. “We would like to have a couple of dozen food safety institutes. Many corporates (in food business) have good research and development labs and we are in discussions with a few,” said Pawan Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI.
He said corporates can use their R&D not only to train their employees, but also to impart skills to vendors, distributors and suppliers. The recent initiative of Nestle can be a model that can be followed by others, where there is no competition, Agarwal noted.
“We hope this model will become a robust one to achieve food safety and hygiene in the country,” said Agarwal. The government has recently launched a fast-track project for skilling food supervisors, under which both government and private food companies can participate. “But they will have to get empanelled with FSSAI,” said Agarwal.
He said it is still early days, but FSSAI has plans to make it a workable model with participation of corporate. Immediately, with Nestle the supervisors of FSSAI are likely to participate in training sessions. While it has not decided yet on the number of sessions, it should be about 25-30 a year, said a Nestle official.
“Once other corporates show interest, then we can look at the kind of support they would need from FSSAI... We want to improve the capacity of staff, especially to do the right testing on latest technology,” said Agarwal.
Globally, the food safety standards are getting reviewed every day for various reasons and international trade being one of them, the regulators need to be update, he said.
Food safety Institute
Corporates can use the R&D not only to train their employees, but also to impart skills to vendors, distributors and suppliers