Veena George, Minister for Health and Family Welfare of Kerala held a meeting of the food safety officers. She said that Food Safety licence /registration is now mandatory for all food business operators (FBO) in the State and all FBOs should have secured the FSSAI licence within three months.
In addition to that, all the Food Business Operators would be required to exhibit the toll-free number of the Food Safety department in their shops.
This action has been taken due to the upcoming monsoon season, which makes the maintenance of food safety extremely crucial. ‘ The food safety section has a role in controlling communicable diseases. The food safety calendar shall be updated periodically,” she said. She also added that more inspections by the food safety wing would be taken up.
Adding to this, she said that the public will have the facility to upload complaints regarding food along with pictures.
She ordered the officials to conduct these inspections regularly and take strict measures in order to ensure that only safe and hygienic food is being served to people. Further, shops that have been given closure notices may be allowed to reopen if food safety regulations are strictly followed and strict follow-up steps are done to guarantee that the violations are not repeated.
Steps must be taken to ensure that surveillance sample findings are available as soon as possible. Assistant Commissioners of Food Safety should review all operations every two weeks at the district level, while state-level reviews should be done every month, said Ms George.
Food safety awareness programmes for the general public should be held on a regular basis, and every shop should have at least one person who is well-versed in the FSSAI guidelines and norms.
The meeting concluded that Operation Matsya had been quite successful in preventing the entrance of contaminated fish from across the border into the market. The initiative resulted in the destruction of 6,597 kg of stale seafood.
In the last 16 days, a total of 3,297 food safety checks were conducted across the state, with 283 outlets ordered closed for operating without the required FSSAI license/registration and 1,075 outlets receiving notifications for violating hygiene standards. Over 400 kg of unfit-for-human-consumption meat was confiscated and destroyed. Juice stores were also examined. While eight juice businesses were required to close their doors, 96 others received notifications for failing to meet food safety regulations.
And 707 institutions were visited as part of Operation Jaggery, which was designed to detect adulteration in jaggery. During the inspections, 151 surveillance samples were obtained.
