The direction issued by Jammu and Kashmir Food and Drug Administration (FDA) directing all Food Business Operators (FBOs), including manufacturers, processors, wholesalers, retailers, cold storage operators, transporters, and e-commerce platforms, to strictly comply with the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 and Packaging and Labeling Regulations, 2020 in relation to the sale of frozen raw meat, chicken, and related products is a welcome step but what is more important is the roadmap to ensure that these norms are complied on ground.
The directions issued in the aforesaid context have nothing new because already these instructions are in vogue and rules say about ensuring that under no circumstances putrefied meat products should reach the customers. The big question in this whole gamut is implementing the rules on ground, and the reiteration by the FDA to comply with the aforesaid rules seems to be an inadequate approach in making things right as this agency will have to change the course to make things work. Rather than asking again and again to the FBOs to comply with the provisions of the aforesaid Act and rules of food safety, it is imperative that the FDA should constitute special squads which cover all the market places evenly and conduct inspections to ensure compliance on ground.
There is no need to go for surprise checking or raiding the FBOs establishments rather it is advisable to come out with a weekly or at least fortnightly schedule of checking, making it a routine to check all the food outlets and storing facilities without any exceptions.
The concerned sleuths of the FDA can even provide the schedule to the business operators to remain ready for such inspections, the practice which is in vogue in many western countries, giving no room to the unscrupulous elements to play with the health of the consumers by indulging in malpractices.
It is good that rules clearly demand that every package of frozen meat or chicken must clearly display the name of the product, list of ingredients, declaration of non-vegetarian status, net quantity, batch or lot number, date of manufacture/packing, expiry or use-by date, storage conditions, manufacturer/ packer/ importer details, FSSAI license number, and logo.
There is dire need to add one more information in the packaged non-vegetarian food items classifying whether the packed entity is Halal or not, because this is also very important as far as diversity of J&K is concerned because people having different faiths have different priorities as far as consuming non-vegetarian items are concerned.
