Foreign food manufacturing facilities exporting certain “high-risk” categories to India need to mandatorily be registered with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) effective February 1, 2023. The categories identified for mandatory registration includes milk and milk-based products, meat and meat products including poultry and fish, infant nutrition, nutraceuticals and egg powder.

The FSSAI had amended its food import regulations to introduce a regulatory framework for registration of foreign food manufacturing facilities that export to the country in November last year. However, the food safety regulator had not outlined the categories that will require mandatory registration.

FSSAI came out with its latest order on Monday. As per regulations, these international food factories can be subjected to inspections and their registration can be cancelled or suspended if found to be non-compliant with Indian food safety standards.

FSSAI has requested authorities in exporting nations to provide a list of existing manufacturers who intend to export products in these categories to India. “Based on the list provided by the competent Authority of the exporting nation, registration of such manufacturing facilities will be done by the FSSAI at its portal,” the order stated.

Importers concerned

Amit Lohani, Founder and Director, the Forum of Indian Food Importers (FIFI), said, “While sharing information is never an issue for the trade, we strongly urge the authorities to ensure that requirements of this nature do not hamper ease-of-doing business. Indian business representatives are in constant discussions with international players and hope that this requirement does not delay the ongoing trade discussions.”

“We also hope that a requirement of this nature is not translated to the low-risk category products like confectionery, cookies or highly-processed food products etc, as historically no major food safety incident has been reported attributing to the same. After the massive impact of pandemic-related uncertainties, businesses are now resuming some positive trade outlook and a procedural obligation of this nature could make operations unviable for them. We will continue to engage with the FSSAI and will re-emphasise the concerns of the industry,” he added.

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