The Food Safety Compliance System (FoSCoS) will cover the entire nation soon, as FSSAI begun the procedure to introduce it in the remaining states. The process will be finished by 26th Oct. and by 1st Nov., the new system will come into operation.
Regarding this, the FSSAI issued a notice stating- “It is notifies that the launch of the 2nd phase of FoSCoS in remaining 27 states is scheduled on 1st Nov. 2020 and to enable the same, the already functional Food Licensing and Registration System (FLRS) shall be closed for remaining 27 states starting from 11pm on 21st Oct.”
The 1st phase of FoSCoS was launched on 1st June 2020 in 9 states- Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Manipur, Odisha, Puducherry, Chandigarh and Ladakh and relaced the existing FLRS.
The notice also informed that all the migration strategy related material, standard operating protocols and FAQs have been made available at the home page of the FoSCoS.
“It is hereby suggested that the users of the system of the remaining 27 states may fnish their pending task related to FSSAI Licensing and Registration on FLRS,” declares the notice.
In addition, a new version of Food Safety Connect (Consumer Grievance) portal will commence with the FoSCoS.
As per FSSAI, the FSSAI’s online licensing platform FLRS is the soul of the licensing ecosystem since 2011 with pan-India (all state and UTs) coverage, 70 lakh licences/ registrations have been issued up till now, and more than 40 lakh licensees/registrants are active presently.
FoSCoS, a cloud-based new food safety compliance online portal which is conceptualized to offer one point stop for all involvement of an FBO with the department for any regulatory compliance transaction.
FSSAI stated that FoSCoS has been amalgamated with FoSCoRIS mobile app and will soon be linked with present IT platforms of FSSAI including INFOLNet, FoSTaC and FICS.
“Sample management, improvement notices, adjudications, audit management system etc. activities/ modules will be initiated in phased manner in future. Technologies such as GPS location tagging, picture capture etc. will be used in future to make sure that field services such as inspections and sampling are being happening transparently and accountably.”
And in future it will be linked with other platforms of Government of India such as GST, PAN and MCA to assure a 360 degree profiling and verification of businesses. “A single regulatory platform will allow an integrated response system to any food fraud across the country and assure an advanced risk-based, data-driven regulatory approach. To start with, FoSCoS will be providing licensing, registration, inspection and annual return modules,” informed the FSSAI.