The Indian Government made it a requirement for all Food Business Operators to carry out business only if they register with the FSSAI. According to the Food Safety and Standard Act of 2006, they defined Food Business Operators as any private or public enterprise, irrespective of whether it makes a profit or not, carrying out activities related to any stages of manufacturing, processing, packaging, storage, transportation, distribution of food, imports and including food services, sale of food, or food ingredients.
To put this simply, the following establishments are classified under this Act:
Other than working on the registration process for FBOs and conducting inspections to make sure they are meeting the requirements mentioned, the FSSAI also works on creating rules that have to be followed by these establishments.
The Food and Safety Department works on framing rules and articles relating to specific policies concerning food. Additionally, it provides technical and scientific support to the Central Government regarding food-related articles while collecting data on the consumption of food.
The FSSAI license number is a 14 digit number that comes with the Food Registration Certificate providing information about the manufacturer. It also furnishes registration details, as proof that the establishment went through the process. The FBO must display their FSSAI logo with their license number on the label of the food package, or at their establishment. If they are working on importing products, the importer displays the FSSAI logo and license number, with their name and address in the case of the imported food product.
In a recent update of their rules, the FSSAI has included applications of e-commerce food services, which includes, delivery services such as Uber Eats, Swiggy and Zomato and online grocery stores like Amazon, Big Basket, etc. One of the main reasons for this is that the food e-commerce sector has grown tremendously, and these platforms operate widely and freely. These services need to check and inspected to ensure compliance with FSSAI rules.
The FSSAI has its headquarters at New Delhi. Additionally, the authority has six regional offices located in Delhi, Guwahati, Mumbai, Kolkata, Cochin, and Chennai. It also has 14 referral laboratories, 72 State and Union Territory laboratories located throughout India.
While conducting a recent survey, it was noticed that there were a lot of states across India that was not performing the way that they should, and the FSSAI began looking into this. They later released a statement saying that many of the poorly performing states have not been able to put in place full-time staff for food safety and do not have proper labs. Food regulator analyses total 106,459 samples across the country and found that over 15.8% food samples as sub-standard, 3.7% unsafe and 9% mislabelled during the year 2018-19.