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FSSAI issues paper to plug loopholes in licensing proprietary food products
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Friday, 23 July, 2021, 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) has issued a draft consultation paper on conditional licensing of proprietary foods seeking comments from the stakeholders to furnish their written comments by July 31, 2021.
For floating the draft, the food authority points out loopholes in the existing regulatory framework, which does not include proprietary food. According to FSSAI, there are reported instances where food manufacturers try to obtain licences for proprietary food products, which closely mimic standardised food products. The diversion towards proprietary foods is due to lack of explicit laws/guidelines on the subject and loose compliance requirement, says the draft.
The draft reads, “In order to resolve these issues, it has been decided by the Food Authority to introduce ‘conditional licensing’ for licence applications for proprietary foods. The concept of conditional licensing is intended to place a bar on entry of such products into the market where composition of the product is diluted/diverted to avoid compliance with standardised food products and yet allow entry of value-added food products which could not fit into the description of a standardised food product or are altogether different products made out of a mix of standardised food products.”
Further, says the draft, that under the FoSCoS (Food Safety Compliance System) portal, an option would be made available to all the Central Licensing Authorities (CLAs) to impose conditions on each of the proprietary food product under a licence application.
“The CLAs shall be required to provide their remarks w.r.t. nearest standardised food product for the proprietary food product applied for licence, whether the vertical standards of the nearest food product shall apply to the proprietary food product and if not, the justified reasons for which deviation is being allowed/rejected for grant of licence and accordingly, impose justifiable conditions to be complied by the FBO with respect to the specific proprietary food product. The conditions so imposed while granting licence shall be printed on the licence and shall remain visible for FBOs, consumers as well as licensing authorities,” reads the draft.
The draft added that CLAs need not impose conditions on all proprietary food products. Rather, CLAs should exercise prudence for imposing conditions generally in cases which seem to escape the rigour of standardised food products either by diluting or diverting the standards through some technological changes/minor addition/deletion and so on. The purpose of the condition should be clear and the condition should be practical, unambiguous and prone to test.
And these conditions should not in any way overrule any of the FSSRs and in specific, the FSS (Prohibition and Restriction on Sales) Regulations, 2011.
The proposed changes—
Presently, proprietary food products are being licensed by Central Licensing Authorities only and being mapped to the nearest food category.
A. Conditional licensing-
The provisions for ‘conditional licensing’ in case of proprietary foods shall be enabled on FoSCoS, wherein CLAs shall report their remarks for each licence application made for proprietary foods under a licence application. The CLAs shall be required to provide their remarks w.r.t. nearest standardised food product for the proprietary food product applied for licence, whether vertical standards of the nearest food product shall apply to the proprietary food product and if not, the justified reasons for which deviation is being allowed/rejected for grant of licence and accordingly, impose justifiable conditions to be complied by the FBO w.r.t. the specific proprietary food product. The conditions so imposed while granting licence shall be printed on the licence against each product as a part of product annexure and shall be visible to FBOs, consumers as well as SLAs/Regional Offices.
The concept of conditional licensing is intended to check the entry of such products into the market where composition of the product is diluted/diverted to avoid compliance with standardised food products and yet allow entry of value-added food products which could not fit into the description of a standardised food product or are altogether different products made out of a mix of standardised food products.
B. Mapping of the proprietary food products-
Mapping of proprietary food products to the nearest food products, wherever available and appropriate to ensure compliance with the vertical standards of standardised food products also. In cases where the product cannot be mapped to any standardised food product, then it shall be mapped to the nearest food category as is being presently done.
FSSAI says that the following questions are raised for seeking comments from the stakeholders and responses to the questions were solicited with justification and supporting documents/examples, if any.
Question 1: Should FSSAI enable conditional licensing of proprietary foods by CLAs? What practical challenges can be envisaged in its operationalisation?
Question 2: Should FSSAI enable mapping of proprietary food products with nearest food products? Are there any practical challenges?
And Question 3: Is there any other proposal by way of which this diversion towards proprietary foods can be tackled?
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