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“20 lakh people trained through FoSTaC till now”
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Monday, 23 December, 2024, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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 With Nhava Sheva and Mundra being India’s biggest ports of entries for almost everything and some 60-70% food imported via these two, FSSAI’s West Region is extremely important when it comes to ensuring food safety in the country. That apart, the region is also known for acing FSSAI's flagship programme, Eat Right India, and FoSTaC programme. Pritee Chaudhary, Regional Director, West Region, FSSAI, in conversation with Manjushree Naik, talks about safe entry of food in the country, the Eat Right India initiative, and more. Excerpts:
How the food safety regulator is assessing its programme BHOG (Blissful Hygienic Offering to God) and making it more strict so that prasadam remains pure?
BHOG is one of our flagship schemes. Through this scheme we want that blissful hygienic offering to the God can be ensured. This scheme is on a voluntary basis and religious institutes are approached in the most modest manner with the sensitivity of religion taken care of. It is gaining pace slowly and gradually but very steadily at the same time.
The basic crux of the scheme remains that the BHOG or the licences of these places thereafter auditing in the mandir premises or religious places. We do impart training. In the post-audit, we ensure that the pre-audit points have been complied with. The training takes care of the change with respect to the social and behavioral aspects of the workers working inside the mandir premises. That offering should not be just prasadam, it should have hygienic values also as per the food safety and standards of our country. We also ensure that the standards of the food are maintained. We do a lot of Eat Right campuses, units, cafeterias, companies, same scheme is replicated in a way at religious places also but, of course, requires much more concerted efforts and lot of persuasion to make it sure and if you see it has larger impact because the offerings are served to so many devotees visiting the temple every day. It has greater impact.
The West region has big import hubs/food entry points. How are you ensuring timely release of consignment of the food importers as well as safe food entry in India?
Nhava Sheva and Mundra ports are India’s biggest two ports of entries for almost everything. Some 60-70% food is imported via these two ports. We have very robust system of regulation at port area. The dedicated team of technical officers is working day in and day out. It is working for lifting of food samples and these samples are sent to NABL accredited laboratories. Only after the pass report, the consignments are allowed to move inside the country. We also ensure that consignments, which have gone inside the country, some of which through red channel and some through green channel, we try to conduct some random surveillances also just to keep a check that the products which have gone inside without testing are also safe through a check and balance system of random checking. This is how we ensure that anything which is coming to India is safe. The second aspect is we are working towards an alert system at FSSAI headquarter level for which West region has given lot of inputs. Once a food article found unsafe shall be placed in alert with respect to the country of origin and the supplier, this alert can be sent to other places or ports. Maybe we can explore the area where it can be exchanged in the country with respect to the unsafe food. This is the second thing that we are trying to do otherwise our current setup is also very robust which is taking 100% care of safety of food that is entering into India.
Mumbai is a great food production hub where small producers/manufacturers are in large numbers. How the food safety department handholds these units to produce safe food?
FSSAI is not only working towards safe food through its enforcement activities, but we are focusing a lot more on the aspect of social and behavioral changes. More than 20 lakh people have already been trained through the FoSTaC training till now. Our target is to train some 25 lakh food handlers in next three years for which we are doing all out efforts at State Government and Central Government levels, through our institutes, through fast-track ToTs (Trainer of the Trainers). Through them we can impart this training at the mass level. These things would start at a level and it can always be multiplied, which is an ongoing programme. With respect to the MSME sector, we at the ITCFSAN (The International Training Centre for Food Safety & Applied Nutrition) level focusing on lot of training and we do take care through the cluster training also, if some cluster has specific requirement of product development, labelling or hygiene, variety of their needs for presenting food in safe and standard and yet presentable mode we do assist them. So in addition to the general training that is the Food Safety Training and Certification (FoSTaC), we are working a lot more on one on one basis with the clusters and the MSME also, so that they can be exposed to the best practices and they can be made more visible, credible with the quality of food that they can serve to the public.
What are your plans for Clean Street Food Hub for the West region?
For Clean Street Food Hub, the hygiene is one of the first and foremost things that we want to see as countrymen in our street hubs. When we go abroad we see lot of streets in small and big countries that are hygienically maintained. This is not just the aspiration of FSSAI but it is of Indians also that they want to see hygiene on the streets. So our former Health and Family Welfare Minister Mansukh Mandaviya proposed a scheme of 100 modern street food hubs, these are being set up all over the country, these are not an end in itself rather these are models which can be replicated throughout the countries by municipal corporations and other urban bodies while they are developing infrastructure for cities. At the same time, at FSSAI we are trying to create a lot more clean city hubs and wherever we are finding some place in urban bodies we are taking out the clusters of hawkers, training them, issuing them licences and giving them away hygienically made food vending carts, which ensure infrastructure-wise food hygiene is maintained in addition to the surroundings, at the same time we impart them training. In Mumbai, we have set up Clean Street Food Hubs in Juhu and Kandivali.
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