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Mehdi, Ali; Tomar, Priyanka; Chaudhry, Divya and Joshi, Pallavi (2019). Facilitating Ease of Doing Business in India's Food Sector: Streamlining Food Safety Compliance Ecosystem in India. New Delhi, India: Academic Foundation.
URL: https://icrier.org/pdf/Streamlining_Food_Safety_Co...
Plain Language Summary
This is one of the two reports requested by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India to streamline the process of food imports and reduce the compliance burden on the food industry based on learning from best practices in the United Kingdom (UK). This report has been supported by the Government of United Kingdom’s Prosperity Fund India Programme. Research for these reports was conducted by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), an autonomous policy research institute ranked by University of Pennsylvania for the third year running as India’s foremost in ‘International Economics’ as well as ‘International Development Policy’. Given the significant contribution of the food industry to economic growth and employment generation in both India and the UK, this report, the first of its kind, undertakes a comparative assessment of the food safety regulatory compliance ecosystems in the two countries, surveys and analyses the compliance burden faced by the food industry in India and suggests steps that FSSAI and related government agencies could consider in order to make food safety compliance rational and proportionate vis-à-vis its stated objectives and to reduce the compliance burden on the food industry in India. A coordinated approach to public policy and regulation is needed in the era of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – an ‘integrated’, ‘indivisible’ and ‘balanced’ approach to ‘the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environment’ has been advocated in the 2030 Agenda and endorsed by world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, 2015.
This report is based on –
• Situation and problem analysis based on desk research as well as field interactions with FSSAI representatives at their New Delhi headquarters (regulatory compliance and IT teams) and Chennai zonal office as well as 21 domestic/multinational food companies across different firm sizes and food industry segments in Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Chennai;
• Interactions with the UK’s food regulator, the Food Standards Agency (FSA), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) as well as a few major food companies, the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and a food safety consultancy in London.
• Desk research involved an extensive review of official documents available on the websites of FSSAI, FSA and GOV.UK, journal articles, reports of industry associations, consultancies, autonomous
government bodies and relevant ministries. Reports and documents shared by regulatory authorities in India and the UK were also reviewed to supplement the analysis. Field research involved semi-structured interviews with the stakeholders mentioned above.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
