Madhya Pradesh: Retailers hand over memo to CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan against harassment

BHOPAL: A delegation of retailers under Bharatiya Udyog Vypar Mandal called on Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and handed over a memorandum against consistent harassment in the name of the Food Safety Training and Certification Program (FoSTaC) and in the name of sample collection by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for testing.

FoSTac is a training module that exhibits all aspects of food and safety norms to be followed during the involvement of any procedure related to food handling, production, processing and its utilisation.

Section 16(3)(h) of the Food Safety Supervisor (FSS) Act mandates that the food authority shall ensure training of food business operator. Along these lines, the FSSAI has developed a training ecosystem which will create trained food-handlers who will be called food safety supervisors.

There should be at least one trained and certified food safety supervisor (on a maximum of 25 employees) in each food service establishment, including the catering industry.

Khudra Vypari Sangh general secretary Anupam Agrawal said, “The chief minister has assured us that he’ll look into the matter and the retailers won’t be harassed. We told the chief minister that we don’t deny that training is a must. But, in the name of training, we’re receiving phone calls for money ranging from Rs 800 to Rs 2,000. In fact, small retailers and restaurant owners have nothing to do with such laws. Second, FDA teams come for sample collection and insult the trader, who is simply a connecting link of manufacturers/producers and customers/consumers. Traders have nothing to do with the products which they sell.”