Govt planning to streamline food imports.

NEW DELHI: The government is about to check the rampant import of food items flooding the market with a comprehensive set of rules that will trigger a recall of foods in case of contamination and issue alerts and warnings on dubious ingredients.

Representatives of the Central Board of Excise and Customs, agriculture ministry, Bureau of Indian Standards, Quality Council of India and the Export Inspection Council, among others, met on Wednesday, under the aegis of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), to evolve an integrated system to streamline food imports.

At present, there is an outpouring of colas and juices, chocolates, biscuits and even fruits into the modern trade. The system, the first of its kind, will address a string of issues such as reducing lead time for clearance of foods at ports and peruse of historical data of imported foods, among others.

FSSAI has teamed up with Hyderabad’s National Institute of Smart Government (NISG) to set up an integrated IT-enabled imported food safety system, which is expected to be finalised by mid-2010.

“Different parameters will be used to standardise different categories of foods. In case of frozen imported foods, for example, lead times for clearances at ports could be much lesser, compared to say, beverages like juices,” an FSSAI official said.

Source : The Economic Times