FSSAI has issued a request for proposal for conduct of the food safety audit of state or Central licenced slaughterhouses across the country. The country’s apex food regulator, in a statement, said that this was a part of its programme, Clean and Safe Meat Campaign, and over 400 slaughter houses in the country were to be audited.
The request for proposal is open to all auditing agencies covered under the Food Safety and Standards Auditing Regulations. Only financial bid was to be submitted by the agencies, which can be either for one or all zones as per their preference. The deadline for filing the bid is 3pm on September 30, 2019.
The bids will be opened at 4pm the same day at FSSAI’s headquarters and a pre-bid meeting shall take place at 11am on October 20, 2019. The audits need to be completed by five months from the date of approval of the request.
According to the regulator, the audit should be conducted as per the provisions of the Food Safety and Standards Act, and a report needs to be made thereunder.
“For the reporting of the audit, the agency has to forward the report to FSSAI and the respective state food safety commissioners within 15 days of the conduct of food safety audit. Besides, the auditors can be asked to conduct more audits, if required,” stated the notice issued by the regulator.
There are 166 slaughter houses in Zone-I, which includes the states of Kerala (27), Tamil Nadu (106) and Telangana (29) and the Union Territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands (four); 153 in Zone-II, which includes Andhra Pradesh (10), Chattishgarh (nine), Goa (four), Gujarat (four), Karnataka (24), Madhya Pradesh (one), Maharashtra (87), and Rajasthan (16), and 165 in Zone-III, which includes Assam (three), Chandigarh (three), Delhi (six), Haryana (12), HP (seven), Jammu and Kashmir (14), Jharkhand (21), Meghalaya (two), Mizoram (two), Punjab (26), Uttar Pradesh (60), Uttarakhand (one) and West Bengal (eight).
