Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has raised its bars for e-commerce food business operators hence, making sure that they maintain high quality and standard. As per the new guidelines released by the food regulators, e-commerce food companies will have to obtain licence for their entire supply chain besides ensuring that delivery of products is done by ’trained personnel’.
These e-commerce food business operators are defined as the business verticals that carry their trade through the online module, as per FSSAI. In its new guideline, FSSAI stated, “E-commerce FBOs shall be covered under schedule-I of the Food Safety and Standards (Licensing and Registration of Food Businesses) Regulation, 2011. These e-commerce FBOs have to obtain license from the Central Licensing Authority for the entire supply chain.”
The guidelines further stretched that the supply chain will include the companies Head Office or registered office, manufacturers, transportation, storage and distribution. This move by the regulator came after it received plethora of complaints from the customers about the online food business operators delivering poor quality food and service.
To beef up the online food safety and standard across the nation, FSSAI has devised these new derivatives, it further commented, “It shall be ensured by the e-commerce FBOs that the last mile delivery is undertaken by trained delivery personnel and the safety of food product is not compromised at the time of delivery. E-commerce entities providing listing/directory services to the sellers/brand owners, restaurants, vendors, importers or manufacturers of the food product may not be required to obtain license/registration under the Act.”