FSSAI plays a positive stroke with a workshop on social mobilization for ‘Safe and Nutritious Food’

Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has taken its batten forward to make the country’s food more hygienic and safer. In its recent move, FSSAI has organized a one day workshop on social mobilization for ‘Safe and Nutritious Food: A way of Life’. Through this initiative, the food regulator body of the country managed to allure the corporate sector indulge in food business under one roof. The event was conducted with the back drop of ‘Corporates for Safe and Nutritious Food’ and it focused on building coalition of corporates and design specific interventions that these business giants can take up in future.

While delivering the keynote,  Dr Lawrence Haddad, Executive Director, Global Alliance for Improvement of Nutrition (GAIN), commented, “Today, it has become very important that the corporates understand that it is absolutely vital to consider food safety and nutrition their first and foremost priority.  It is smart, right and sustainable thing to do. And if we look at the broader prospective, this card can prove very beneficial for the corporates and CEOs in order to gain the trust of the customers.” For scaling up the efforts, Dr Haddad said that the corporates should work as a sector and should involve social goals in their corporate strategies.

Elaborating further on the aforementioned subject, Santosh Desai, Managing Director, Future Brands, described how there has been a fundamental shift in the thinking of corporates about corporate social responsibility. Earlier it was seen as charity, then it became defensive mechanism. But now, it can be marked as the beginning among the corporates to be pro-active in implementing idea of integrating social impact and profit.

Siraj Chaudhry, Chairman, Cargill (India), stressed on the importance of consumer education to make them aware about food safety and nutrition. He explained the manner in which the corporates can integrate simple messages in their mainstream marketing campaigns.

Sachin Taparia, Chairman and CEO, Local Circles, described as to how the online citizen community on ‘Food Safety’ would work. He said in just five days 30,000 people have already registered as members. The community was launched today officially at the workshop. Any citizen interested in Food safety can join the community by visiting – http://bit.ly/foodsafety-comunity.

In his closing remarks, Ashish Bahuguna, Chairperson, FSSAI, expressed satisfaction over the corporates’ response to the workshop and urged them to get actively involved in the efforts to spread the message of food safety and nutrition.

Earlier, in his welcome address, Pawan Agarwal, CFEO, FSSAI, elaborated on various initiatives of FSSAI for spreading the message of food safety and nutrition at different places like home, schools, work places and eating places etc.  Apart from workshop, FSSAI also unleashed it three initiatives such as new website, online instant packaged drinking  water system and consumer complaint redressal system.