Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) under Ministry of Health & Family Welfare and Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) under Ministry of Science & Technology have recently signed an MoU for collaborative research and information dissemination in the area of food and nutrition. Dr Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Health and Family Welfare presided over the signing of the MoU. Sh. Ashwini K. Choubey Minister of State (HFW) was also present on the occasion. The collaboration between these two premier institutions of India will contribute in fulfilling the vision of New Food System 2050.
The two organisations will collaborate towards strengthening the quality assurance of laboratory network across the country aimed at development and validation of methods for reliable reporting on quality and safety of food products. The collaboration will enable collection of data regarding food consumption, incidence and prevalence of biological risk, contaminants in food, identification of emerging risks, their mitigation strategies and introduction of rapid alert system.
Dr Harsh Vardhan congratulated both FSSAI and CSIR for this innovative step that will merge the potential and faculties of both the premier organizations. He said that the MoU “is a significant step that will create a brighter future for India, seeking collaborative research and information dissemination in the area of food and nutrition, as also food and consumer safety solutions in India. It would enable the agencies to identify technologies and programs that could be developed in the areas of food safety and nutrition research. CSIR would also get recognition for the innovative technologies available with it and which could be deployed by the Indian businesses and/or for regulating compliances.”
The FSSAI has been selected as one of the ten global organizations to receive an award by the Rockefeller Foundation, SecondMuse, and OpenIDEO for the ‘Eat Right India’ movement. The award recognizes organisations that have developed an inspiring vision of the regenerative and nourishing food system that they aspire to create by the year 2050.
Dr Harsh Vardhan congratulated the FSSAI on this achievement and stated that the award is was a strong recognition of FSSAI’s holistic and path breaking approach towards food safety and nutrition. It also provides the vision for its growth path. He said that “the vision of ‘Health for All’ can be achieved through the twin measures of ensuring physical exercise and choosing nutritious food in our daily lives. The ‘Eat Right India’ vision is about creating a culture of safe, healthy and sustainable food involving all stakeholders and leveraging technology in food production, processing, distribution, quality and traceability and to empower consumers to adopt right eating practices”.
Dr. Harsh Vardhan also highlighted the fact that the new food system of 2050 will see a surge in demand for healthy, nutritious, plant-based, local, seasonal and indigenous foods, produced organically. He said it will also see an enhanced focus on climate-friendly food production systems, conservation of land and water resources, reduction in food loss and food wastage across the value chain, increase in small scale production units for self-sustaining local economies, use of environment friendly packaging alternatives, repurposing of waste.
Shri Ashwini Kumar Choubey congratulated the recipients of the highly respected Rockefeller Award. He said “The movement envisioned by India will lead to a revival of traditional Ayurvedic wisdom in ancient food practices, a variety of new employment opportunities to bring these measures into practice and support local and rural economies, particularly for women bringing about economic growth and gender equity.” The MoU with CSIR will enable FSSAI to identify existing and novel technologies and programs, collect data regarding food consumption, incidence and prevalence of existing emerging risks, develop a rapid-alert system and strengthen the quality assurance laboratory network for this purpose”, he added.
Sh. Shekhar C Mande, DG-CSIR, Sh. Arun Singhal, CEO, FSSAI and other senior officials of FSSAI and CSIR were also present at the occasion. Dr. Amulya K. Panda, Dr. Sudesh Kumar Yadav of Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB, Mohali), an autonomous body under DBT, Dr. Addanki Vamsi Krishna, Scientist, DBT; and Directors of CSIR labs; Shri KMKS Raghava Rao, Director, Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI, Mysore), Dr. Alok Dhawan, Director, Indian Institute of Toxicology Research (IITR, Lucknow), Dr. Sanjay Kumar, Director, Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (IHBT, Palampur), Dr. Ayyappanpillai Ajayaghosh, Director, National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (NIIST , Thiruvananthapuram), and Dr. Narahari Sastry, Director, North East Institute of Science and Technology (NEIST, Jorhat) joined the meet digitally.
****
Leave a Reply