DATA STORY : State food safety index 2022

Published
25th Jun, 2022

Download

To encourage States/UTs to improve their performance and work towards establishing a proper food safety ecosystem in their jurisdiction, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) releases the State Food Safety Index (SFSI) annually for each financial year. The Index is a dynamic quantitative and qualitative benchmarking model that provides an objective framework for evaluating food safety across all States/UTs.

The Food Safety Index reflects the overall performance of the States/ UTs on various parameters of food safety, namely, Human Resources and Institutional Data, Compliance, Food Testing – Infrastructure and Surveillance, Training & Capacity Building and Consumer Empowerment. SFSI 2022 is the 4th in a series of State Food Safety Index (SFSI) since its inception in 2018-19.

The SFSI takes into account the performance of the states on five key parameters, each of which is assigned a different weightage in the assessment.

Human resources & institutional data: This carries a weightage of 20% and measures the “availability of human resources like number of Food Safety Officers, Designated Officers facility of adjudications and appellate tribunals, functioning of State/ District level Steering Committees, pendency of cases and their monitoring and participation in Central Advisory Committee meetings of the Food Authority”.
Compliance: This carries the highest weightage, 30%. “This is the most important parameter and measures overall coverage of food businesses in licensing & registration commensurate with size and population of the State/UTs.
Food testing—infrastructure and surveillance: Weighted at 20%, this measures the “availability of adequate testing infrastructure with trained manpower in the States/ UTs for testing food samples”.
Training & Capacity Building: This parameter carries the lowest weightage, at 10%. It measures states’ performance on training and capacity building of regulatory staff.
Consumer Empowerment: This carries a weightage of 20%. It evaluates the states and UTs on their performance on various consumer empowering initiatives of FSSAI, such as participation in Food Fortification, Eat Right Campus, BHOG (Blissful Hygienic Offering to God), Hygiene Rating of Restaurants, Clean Street Food Hubs, etc.