TUV India in association with GIZ organized Best Practices Forum on Food Safety and Regulations to successfully conclude the project which was initiated to improve food safety hygiene and product quality in the Indian food processing sector. This project has been implemented by TUV India Pvt. Ltd. under the development partnership with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. This program was implemented in the framework of the develoPPP.de initiative and co-funded by German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
The project focused on improving awareness, knowledge and providing training opportunities in food safety standards and tools for the implementation of food safety management systems. As part of the project, TUV India published handbooks on food regulations and FSMS for various sectors: Meat Processing & Animal Casing, Processed Foods, Bakery and Confectionery, Spices, Snacks & Sweets and Generic Food Processing Industry.
The Best Practices Forum, which was co-partnered by AFSTI focused on exchange of experiences by participants of this project who underwent training towards successful implementation of ISO 22000 in their units. During the event, the certificates were handed over to them as a result of successful completion of audit. The program also saw several eminent speakers from the industry sharing their insights regarding diverse topics. Shri S K Yadav, Director - Western Zone - FSSAI and Mr. Ais Kumar, Deputy Director - FSSAI were the Chief Guests for the Best Practices Forum. Mr. S. K. Yadav provided insights into the import procedures for food products and ease of doing business.
The Best Practices Forum was attended by about 150 participants and offered opportunities for interaction with thought leaders, business professionals and experts from the food fraternity on trends, regulations and national and international standards on food safety.
"With this project initiative, we have built training capabilities and created awareness among organizations, to ensure improved food safety compliance and implement globally-accepted standards to meet the global market demands. I am sure that this initiative will go a long way in creating sustainable value creation through implementation of food safety systems, even at the grass root levels. Knowledge multipliers, which will endure beyond the tenure of the project, are expected to have a lasting benefit thereby supporting the Indian food industry to fulfil the Make in India vision," says Kaustubh A Korde, Executive Director, TUV India .
"We started this project in 2014. During the course of this project, we have trained over 1000 food safety practitioners from various institutions, growers, industry professionals, shop floor works, academia, students and many others from food community. We wholeheartedly thank GIZ for supporting us to implement the project. We are happy to know that many food industry personnel have really benefited from these training programs and we expect that they will be the future torchbearers to transfer knowledge and impart training to their stakeholders," says Asha Sridhar, Head - Food Safety Services, TUV India.
"Together with TUV India we started our journey, achieved many milestones and reached our destination. Within the develoPPP.de programme, the private sector and development cooperation joined forces to identify solutions to the global challenges and this is one of the examples of such cooperation. This forum offered a platform for exchange of global best practices, experiences and a diversity of factors for knowledge sharing and mutual learning," says Dr. Poonam Pandey, Technical Expert, GIZ.