FSSAI plans centralized food surveillance system, reducing state officers' role

To this end, the FSSAI is working on setting up a centralized surveillance mechanism to monitor food quality across the entire country. The proposed framework was discussed during the 49th Central Advisory Committee (CAC) meeting of FSSAI chaired by chief executive officer (CEO) Rajit Punhani and attended by state food safety commissioners.

“The States/UTs were briefed regarding the proposal on developing the Centralised Surveillance Sampling Mechanism by FSSAI,” said the document reviewed by Mint.

The detailed mechanism would be placed in the next CAC meeting, according to the document.

India has 2,997 FSOs (working against 4,208 sanctioned posts) at the central and state levels, who report into 36 food commissioners across all states and Union territories.

Queries emailed to the spokespersons of the health and family welfare ministry and FSSAI on 18 May remained unanswered till press time.

Queries emailed to the food commissioners of Delhi, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Karnataka on Thursday morning were not immediately answered.

According to the first official cited above, by separating regular market surveillance from enforcement crackdowns, food safety officers will no longer have the authority to collect a surveillance sample. Instead, a neutral third-party agency—to be chosen through a bidding process—will buy food from the market as part of surveillance testing.

Samples will be tested at approved laboratories and the results uploaded to a national database. “If the lab finds a food item unsafe, the central system will instantly send a digital alert with the exact batch numbers directly to the state's food safety commissioner,” this official said.

The official added that at this point, local FSOs will be allowed to collect formal enforcement samples and divide them into four parts. “One sample goes to the main testing lab, the second is given to the business owner so they have a fair chance to appeal the findings, the third is sent to another lab if the owner requests it, and the fourth is sealed and kept safely as evidence for the court.”

According to this official, the centralized tracking system would allow the food regulator’s scientific division to quickly design new testing methods for unauthorized chemicals or new adulteration techniques, update national safety limits, and issue swift alerts to warn the public.

The new rules will also require half of all surveillance samples to be sourced directly from large organized supply chains, reducing the ability of individual FSOs to target specific stores. FSSAI headquarters will pay laboratories directly.

According to a 17 March statement from the health and family welfare ministry, over 518,000 samples were analyzed in three years, with 88,192 penalties imposed and 3,614 convictions secured.

Pawan Agrawal, former CEO of FSSAI, said surveillance is globally considered more effective for ensuring food safety than punitive enforcement, which often takes time because legal processes provide checks and balances to protect the innocent. He added that surveillance is outsourced to third parties globally.

“However, private companies can also engage in corrupt practices, or fudge and manipulate data, if proper monitoring is absent,” Agrawal said. “Unless you are very careful, the same corrupt practices seen with food safety officers can happen with private entities, too.”

A spokesperson for Tata Consumer Products welcomed the move, saying that such a structured and systematic approach will help generate critical compliance data, which can be leveraged to identify food safety priority areas and shape future enforcement strategies including setting up and revising product standards.

“Quality data should move as fast as distribution does, and right now it doesn't,” said Akash Agrawalla, co-founder of ZOFF Foods, a spice and packaged food brand. “A product can be on the shelves across 20 states while a quality issue stays contained to the state where it was first detected. That's the gap this mechanism is trying to close, and it's the right problem to solve.”

He added that from an industry standpoint, too, this is a positive shift because it rewards brands that have invested seriously in quality systems and process control.