Food Safety and Standards Scheme for food testing labs
Food Safety and Standards Authority announced to spend Rs482 crore for opening of new food testing labs. This budget is at present for the 7 States/UTs, namely, Goa, Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Punjab. Other state wills consider latterly.
FSSA Also plan to open some mobile food testing laboratories in the country, at present there are only four mobile testing labs which are in Punjab, Gujarat, Kerala and Tamil Nadu
| S.No | Things Need to Know about FSSAI | Detailed Information |
| 1 | FSSAI | Food Safety and Standards Authority of India |
| 2 | Head office of the FSSAI Located in | Delhi |
| 3 | Under which act FSSAI has been established? | Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 |
| 4 | Who Implemented FSSAI | Ministry of Health & Family Welfare |
| 5 | Amount allocated by FSSAI to improve Food Testing Labs in India | Rs. 486 Crores |
This decision is taken by Food Safety and Standards Authority because of Bombay High Court decision in which court said that there is need of more food testing labs as quality of packed food is dropping in India and this is not good for health. Court give this order when in 2015 court found monosodium glutamate, and lead in excess in Maggi Noodle and after that court banned on this product.
Food Safety and Standards Authority take this decision so that quality of food gets improved. In this Rs482 crore FSSA plan to open 45 food testing laboratories all over the India and plan to upgrade th them so that they enable them to get hold of NABL accreditation.
Benefits of more food testing laboratories
- After the decision of opening new food testing laboratories the standard of packed food is increase. And food that is not good for health will be banned by them.
- As these new lab are build by keeping the standard of NABL accreditation in mind. So food that will be test in these labs follow the NABL accreditation
- As 7 states gets new labs so they need not to outside the state for the food testing and food testing in these state become easy
- Companies who will not follow the healthy food standard will be banned by these companies as in motive of solving lot of health problem
Food Safety and Standards Authority has been planning to renew its Ghaziabad laboratory, which is almost out of use at the present. Also Under this scheme, approximate all the state including UT will have provision of 1 food testing lab and big state have minimum 2 food lab. It is carried out so that no state will remain dependent for food testing. So this scheme main target is that every state has at least 1 testing lab
Conclusion:
Indian one of the promising developing countries in the world faces huge threat in name of food safety. It is mandatory for Indian government to take such strong initiatives to provide better safety for food distributions in India, especially in packed foods. With the steps taken by FSSAI there’s no doubt that, when this entire new food testing lab starts working, it will surely improve the food standard in India. Also experts across the country suggest strong law enforcement should be introduced to should be implemented on those who possess real threat to food safety.
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