Food Safety and Hygiene Practices as per FSSAI schedule 4 requirement

To provide assurance of food safety and its hygiene, the food businesses must implement an effective form of Food Safety Management System or FSMS depending on the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point or HACCP. They must also follow some of the suitable pre-requisite programs by controlling hazards actively throughout the food chain. It starts from food production till the final consumption section.

We at FICSI will provide detailed information about the general requirement of sanitary and hygienic practices as per FSSAI to our aspiring candidates who have taken an active part in the current programs. The main goal is to prepare them for the Indian food processing industry and follow the government rules to ensure safe product consumption by the general public.

The license condition:

According to the condition of a license under FSS Regulations 2011 or Licensing & Registration of Food Businesses, every food business operator who is applying for the license must have documented FSMS plan and then comply with schedule 4 of the said regulation. Schedule 4 has introduced the concept of FSMS, depending on the implementation of the Good Hygiene Practices (GHP) and the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) by the food businesses. These are subjectively divided into 5 major parts.

Part 1:

It talks about the general hygiene and sanitary practices that very food business operators should follow while applying for registration. It can be anyone from food operators to street food vendors. We have programs talking about these hygiene and sanitary practices in detail.

Part 2:

It calls for the general hygiene and sanitary practices, which are to be followed by food business operators looking to apply for a license. Some of those examples are manufacturing, processing, storage, packaging and distribution.

Part 3:

This part deals with the general sanitary and hygiene practices, which are to be followed by food business operators applying for licenses like milk and milk items.

Part 4:

It will cover the general sanitary and hygiene practices that those food business operators should follow, who are applying for licenses for meat processing and slaughterhouses.

Part 5:

The final part talks about the general sanitary and hygiene practices, as per the fssai schedule 4 requirements, to be followed by good business operators applying for Catering License.

The addition of the COVID 19 pandemic:

 

Other than the GHPs as laid in Schedule 4 of FSSAI, food workers or handlers must be aware of the COVID-19 symptoms so that they are able to recognise the symptoms early and then seek proper medical care and testing. It helps in minimising the risk factor of infecting other fellow workers.

Here, the food workers or handlers must be provided with training on the risk factors, social distancing, safe food handling and other protective behaviours needed amid COVID-19 infections. We at FICSI have covered all these points under our programming schedule to help food workers handle the food processing business well.

Being a skill council, we accredit some of the potential training providers having proper training infrastructure as per our dissemination guidelines on our Qualification Packs.