Eat Right India Gets International Recognition

New Delhi, August, 2020: The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India has been awarded the Food Systems Vision Prize for its Eat Right India movement’s vision for the future along with nine other finalists. Announced by The Rockefeller Foundation, SecondMuse and OpenIDEO, the prize is for organizations across the globe that have developed an inspiring vision of the regenerative and nourishing food system that they aspire to create by the year 2050.

The ‘Eat Right India’ movement is a collective effort of all stakeholders in the food environment. This movement includes regulatory actions as well initiatives targeted to food businesses and consumers. Eat Right India’s vision for 2050 is about creating a culture of safe, healthy and sustainable food for all and to address its numerous public health, economic and environmental challenges. The new food system of 2050 will see a surge in demand for nutritious and indigenous foods produced organically. It will also see an enhanced focus on climate-friendly food production systems with lower carbon footprint and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, conservation of land and water resources, reduction in food loss and food wastage across the value chain, use of environment friendly packaging alternatives, recycling and repurposing of waste. The revival of traditional wisdom emerging from Ayurveda and a shift towards ancient food practices that are nourishing to people and the planet is also envisaged.

This involves taking a food systems approach to bring to life various public health, economic, environmental, cultural, technological and policy-related measures in the coming years. It also entails working across sectors and taking a ‘whole of the government approach for synergy with related line ministries and departments. Strong networks and innovative tools have been put in place, so that the Eat Right Initiatives can be replicated at scale across the length and breadth of the country by states and implementation partners such as network of Professionals in Food and Nutrition (NetProFaN) by involving the seven professional associations such as IDA, NSI, IMA, NSI, AFSTI, AOAC, and IFCA and Network for Scientific Co-operation for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (NetSCoFAN) with the support of eight scientific institutions in different areas related to food testing and safer and sustainable packaging.

To further bring synergies and collaboration in the area of food safety & nutrition, an MoU was signed between FSSAI and Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) for seeking collaborative research and information dissemination in this space. The areas for collaboration will include (i) Identifying technologies and programs to be developed in the area of food safety and nutrition research (ii) Recognizing innovative technologies available with CSIR for deployment by the Indian businesses and/or for regulating compliances (iii) 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; (iv) Preparing joint reports on the collaborative outcomes (v) Strengthening the quality assurance of laboratory network across country towards development and validation of methods for reliable reporting on quality and safety of food products.

Comments

0