06-11-2023 | 18:04 PM
Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) published the State Food Safety Index (SFSI) 2023.
About the Index
Since 2019, FSSAI has released the State Food Safety Index (SFSI) each year on June 7 on the occasion of World Food Safety Day.
FSSAI has developed the State Food Safety Index to measure the performance of states on various parameters of Food Safety.
It is based on five parameters: Human Resources and Institutional Data, Compliance, Food Testing – Infrastructure and Surveillance, Training & Capacity Building and Consumer Empowerment.
In the 2023 index, a new parameter called ‘Improvement in SFSI Rank’ was added, which assesses improvement in each state’s rank from the year before.
Based on the fact that similar States should be compared to ensure comparability among similar entities they are classified into 3 categories namely Large States, Small States and UTs.
Key Highlights:
Top States:Kerala has topped the index followed by Punjab and Tamil Nadu. Among smaller states, Goa stood first for the fourth time in a row, followed by Manipur and Sikkim.
Among Union territories, Jammu and Kashmir, Delhi, and Chandigarh secured first, second, and third ranks.
Drop in Scores: 19 out of 20 large states — including Maharashtra, Bihar, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh — recorded a drop in their 2023 scores from 2019.
The worst drop has been recorded in the ‘Food Testing Infrastructure’ parameter, where the average score for all large states dropped.
The declining average scores on the SFSI raise grave concerns, given the importance of nutrition for the sustainable growth of any country.
