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E-com cos-FSSAI agree over mandatory licensing; discuss products shelf life
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Tuesday, 10 December, 2019, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Ashwani Maindola, New Delhi
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The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) recently held a meeting with e-commerce companies to assess their compliance with FSS Regulations. The two sides agreed that guidelines for e-commerce FBOs must be complied with in letter and spirit and FBOs and third-party e-commerce platform providers must apply for FSSAI licence, if not yet procured.
Further, the e-commerce platforms made a representation before the FSSAI officials regarding provisions of guidelines stipulating delivery of products with shelf life of 30% or 45 days. The e-commerce players told the apex food regulator that they were facing problems in meeting this condition and requested to reduce this shelf life period required.
However, the FSSAI replied that this condition was laid down to ensure that consumers do not get products with very limited shelf life and these need to be adhered to strictly.
The meeting chaired by the Executive Director, Compliance Strategies, Dr Shobhit Jain, witnessed the two sides agreeing further on making efforts to comply with the regulations particularly identifying food businesses operating without licences on e-commerce platforms through mutual sharing of information of such FBOs.
Dr Jain stated that third-party e-commerce platform providers can share the data with FSSAI, which can be verified for validity of licences and followups while such platforms can themselves check about FBOs through FBO search facility on food licensing portal of the apex food regulator.
It was also agreed that the sellers on such platforms will display the licence or the registration number prominently to help the customers make informed choices. And the platforms should take immediate steps on the issue of complaints forwarded to them by the FSSAI.
“The third-party e-commerce platform providers with their unique business model and website being in public domain always remain under the public glare and scrutiny which puts additional onus on them to ensure demonstrable and expeditious compliance,” said Dr Jain.
He pointed out that a majority of food related complaints could be avoided by them by ensuring compliance to the FSSA, rules and regulations not only themselves but also by their partners and the products put up for sale on their websites, while it was observed that FBOs had already taken several steps to ensure compliance on their counts.
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