Tag Archives: FSSAI

Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) has requested Arun Singhal, CEO, Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) to extend the timeline to implement the mentioning of FSSAI License number on bills for FBOs on the backdrop of the pandemic’s impact to Hospitality businesses. The association says that it is in favour of the FSSAI’s latest order, which will help set up a robust customer grievance system in the country. “FHRAI appreciates the FSSAI’s endeavour to set up a robust customer grievance system in the country. This will also improve the overall awareness of FSSAI and its underlying objectives of creating a safe and hygienic ecosystem for FBOs. While this is a great initiative, it has to be taken into account that at present, the tourism and hospitality is the most impacted sector by the COVID19 pandemic. In all probabilities, it will be the last one to recover as well. During such times of deep crisis, the implementation of this order would entail a lot of additional expenses on businesses. Printing new receipts, invoices, bills, cash memos as well as updating software and PMS, among other ancillary activities will only burden the cash-strapped industry even more. Hence, we request the FSSAI to extend the timeline for implementation of the order until such time that some normalcy returns to the sector,” says Mr Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, Vice President, FHRAI.

FHRAI has welcomed FSSAI’s enforcement rules making registration mandatory for home-cooked food sellers, whether operating from home or from dark kitchens. “FSSAI has responded to our plea and is taking to task any such unregulated and illegal dark kitchens. Quite a few of these are actually funded and run by the Food Service Aggregators (FSAs) to escape responsibilities attached to operating restaurants legally,” says Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, VP, FHRAI.

Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, Vice President, Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) and President of HRAWI, has said that the association’s hospitality institute has launched new courses that were to start from March 2020. He says, “We have an institute called FIHM, which is short for FHRAI IHM in Greater Noida and keeping the demand for shorter courses in mind and so many new trends emerging, we have introduced short-term courses on FOSTAC and FSSAI that involve skill development. This is also something that the government is pushing. We have these courses ready and they were due to start immediately but now we have kept it on hold because of the unfortunate coronavirus situation. We will start them as soon as it comes under control. Apart from short-term courses, we also have the regular courses but we have stressed in these short courses as that’s the need of the hour. There will be guest lecturers and visiting facility for this as well.”

The Hotel and Restaurant Association of Northern India (HRANI) held its conclave recently on ‘Synergising Food Safety Standards & Regulation in Hospitality Industry’ at The Imperial, New Delhi in association with Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). Speaking at the press conference, Pawan Aggarwal, CEO, FSSAI said, “We have moved a long way since last year in building trust with the food businesses. With our focus on trainings, 16-18000 people have been trained and about 850 training sessions have been held. Our focus remains on preventive safety.” On the upcoming projects, he said, “In a few months, we will be launching a new generation of IT platform, Food Safety Compliance System (FSCS), which will provide a history sheet of food permissions and their compliances. We are also trying to establish clean street food hubs by demarcating areas for street food.” Plenary sessions were held on ‘Simplification of Food Safety Regulations for ease of doing business’ and ‘Save Food Share Food Share Joy Initiative’. An awards ceremony also took place to felicitate HRANI member units for implementation of Food Safety Training and Certification(FoSTaC).