The FSSAI is a governmental body tasked with ensuring food safety in India. The FSSAI registration was created at the central level, to ensure that food products being sold in the Indian marketplace would adhere to a set of guidelines and regulations at any given time. In other words, the main goal of an FSSAI registration was to ensure public health, through a mechanism of regulation and supervision of food safety in the country. The department issues licenses to various businesses on the basis of an FSSAI fee. The FSSAI fee is paid at the time of registration, and the subsequent number issued is printed on their product or mentioned in a prominent place, for the general public.
The term FSSAI is an acronym for ‘Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’.
The FSSAI is an autonomous body, as per the existing legislative framework. This department in turn operates under the Ministry of Public Health, which operates under the central government of India. The department is in other words, a part of the central government of India, and whose oversight extends all across the territory of India, with regard to issues concerning food licensing.
The purpose of setting up the FSSAI department was in very simple words, for the sake of efficiency and simplicity of the food safety registration and regulation in India. It became apparent that as time passed by, there was a clear need for the creation of a body to regulate the food safety oversight across India. The reason for this was because the entire system of food safety management and regulation was very chaotic across the country. It became very difficult to manage food safety regulations in the country, owing to multiple departments throughout the country being tasked with the job. In an effort to quell the mess and make the process efficient, a new governmental body called the FSSAI was created, and tasked with all of the above mentioned responsibilities. In other words, the FSSAI was made the only department in the entire country that could oversee food safety and quality standards across the country. Today, all food manufactures are required to get FSSAI license, in order to operate in the market.