Hyderabad: Stressing the urgent need for 100 per cent inspection of packaged drinking water (PDW) units and rigorous checks on water treatment plants, G Kamala Vardhana Rao, chief executive officer of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), chaired a comprehensive review meeting here on Friday, focusing on strengthening the overall food safety ecosystem.This comes when food poisoning cases continue to plague residential schools in the state, and students continue to be affected by severe lack of food safety protocols. The state food safety department, currently under the care of health secretary Dr Christina Chongthu, is unable to provide detailed reports of inspections done in educational institutes. Emphasising the need for enhanced food safety enforcement, CEO Vardhana Rao directed officials to scale up sample collection, undertake risk-based inspections and ensure swift action against food adulteration. He underscored the importance of timely adjudication of food safety cases, preferably within 90 days as per the Food Safety and Standards (FSS) Act, 2006. Senior officials including additional district magistrates, appointed as adjudicating officers, and 50 food safety officers (FSOs) from 33 districts attended the meeting and spoke of the government’s initiatives for expanding food safety. These include RAFT (rapid analytical food testing) kits to be provided to FSOs. In addition, mobile food testing labs will be deployed more frequently to improve real-time monitoring and field-level surveillance. The CEO also urged fast-tracking the establishment of the Food Safety Laboratory in Hyderabad and assured full support from FSSAI. This initiative is expected to significantly boost the state’s food testing capacity.
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