FSSAI in its recent notification, has specified the respective roles of all the state governing bodies and concerned authorities in case of reporting the centre if there is a food safety emergency. This step is taken in order to make the food safety emergency framework more responsible, accesible and efficient to elicit an immediate response to combat the food emergency, if unfortunately comes.
The Food Safety Commissioners (FSC) will be responsible for overall governance of the food safety incidents in the state and will have to ensure proper surveillance of food products and provide surveillance report to National Emergency Contact Point (NECP).
FSC will have to research about the reasons of the emergency and any approaching emergency as well. In both the situation FSC will coordinate with all the involved authorities and help them to uproot the situation as a whole. FSC has a role to formulate the framework to mitigate the situation and implementation of intiatives. FSC will also have to collate the point post incident and present it in Central Advisory committee meeting.
The Designated Officers (DOs) will act as nodal officer in case of a food safety emergency including food-borne illness outbreak and coordinate with the local health authorities. DOs will also nominate Food Safety Officers (FSOs) to be the part of Rapid Response Team (RRT) during food safety incidents. DOs will also have to take immediate actions and submit an interim report within 48 hours to the FSC and FSSAI.
Under this food safety emergency framework, FSOs will act as a member of RRT and has recruited to perform investigation of the facilities involved in kicking off the emergency and suggesting troubleshooting ways prima facie.
Under the food safety emergency framework, the responsibilities of state and local health authorities were also specified. According to the framework, their role will include collection of food consumption history of patients with food-borne disease and epidemiological data of food-borne diseases, dissemination of information and data like clinical reports or suspected pathogens and suspected implicated foods and so on to the FSOs related to the food-borne illness outbreak and coordinate with state food authority and NECP, FSSAI during emergency.