The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has issued a directive to State Food Safety Commissioners directing them that they ‘must’ avoid unnecessary documentation for the purpose of licensing or registration of food businesses.
The directive says that the licensing authorities must avoid demanding additional or irrelevant documents for the purpose of licensing or registration which is not related to the laid parameters for approval of the licences or registration.
“A list of documents required for each kind of business is already available on the Food Licensing and Registration System (FLRS) and licensing authorities may limit their queries only to those documents,” says the directive of FSSAI.
The order added that in case additional documents are considered essential, the reason must be recorded for calling the same in FLRS and these reasons shall invariably be submitted to Food Safety Commissioner/Director Regional Office for review.
The FSSAI’s directive further says that queries should not be asked in piece-meal manner while the applications should be scrutinised properly wherein deficiencies in application should be raised in one go.
In this regard, Dr Shobhit Jain, Executive Director, Compliance Strategy, FSSAI, stated that FSSAI was in receipt of cases of licensing authorities demanding FBOs to submit documents or information not relevant or required under the FSS (Licensing and Registration of Food Business) Regulations.
“Many a time, these additional documents have no direct relevance to the kind of business applied for and sometimes they are quite irrelevant like asking for in-house laboratory in food business where it is not mandatory or recall plan in case of transporter etc. this causes inconvenience to and harassment of FBOs and undue delay in processing of the applications and therefore the directions have been issued,” he said.
The directive also added that in case of auto generated licences the licensing authorities shall check those applications to ensure that all documents filed are in order. Else a notice should be issued to FBOs and further processing undertaken.
Meanwhile, the Commissioners of Food Safety and Directors of the Regional Offices have been asked to conduct a monthly monitoring meeting to review such cases where queries have been raised more than twice, where additional documents have been called by FSO or designated officer and cases where licences are generated due to non-attendance by the licensing officers.
“The FSSAI will also help the licensing authorities in identifying such cases where queries were raised two times in a month on a single application. It would generate a monthly report,” stated Dr Jain.
