India Emerging As ‘Food Testing Hub' For SE Asia

Over the years, there are two imperatives, quality and food safety, which have become a competitive edge in the global market for the enterprises producing and marketing food products. In order to get these imperatives function properly, various aspects such as quality control, quality system and quality assurance should function in a horizontal fashion for total success. In a country like India, where its food products face a very strong competition from global companies, the country is gearing up to become ‘Food Testing Hub’ of the South East Asia region. NuFFooDS Spectrum analyses the market sentiments and reports to get the real picture of the subject.

- Nitin Konde

India has been one of the major food factories in the Asian domain. With the rapidly increasing population, the country has been working on overhauling the entire food chain not only to increase its production but also to raise the quality standards. In order to beef up the food testing system, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has rolled out nine mobile food testing units which are installed in eight states of the country. The second batch of mobile units is expected to roll out in November during World Food India 2017 event which is organised by Ministry of Food Processing Industries.

Food Testing Laboratories play a very important role in quality check and testing. In western countries, very strong emphasis has put on devising a very high quality food testing laboratory system to check and maintain the high quality food products.

India too is following the same system to produce the world class quality products. Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) has been working rigorously to upgrade Food Testing Laboratory (FTL) infrastructure in India. The main objective of this upgradation is to provide a safe nutritious diet in order to maintain health other aspects in today’s world. The MoFPI is upgrading the food testing laboratories which would benefit all stakeholders including domestic industry (domestic and exports), entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises.Besides MoFPI, FSSAI has stepped in to beef-up country’s FTL system with a massive investment of Rs 482 crore.

Ashish Bahuguna, Chairperson, FSSAI said, “The holistic effort towards using digital solutions, strengthening food safety infrastructure, enhancing capabilities and creating a large pool of trained specialists would go a long way in ensuring that the food safety and hygiene ecosystem becomes more robust.”