RECOGNITION SCHEME FOR HYGINE RATING AUDIT AGENCIES
Context
- Quality Council of India (QCI) at the behest of the FSSAI has come out with a Scheme for approval of Hygiene Rating Audit Agencies to scale up Hygiene Rating by increasing the number of recognised Hygiene Rating Audit Agencies in the country.
More about news
- FSSAI’s initiative of ‘Food Hygiene Rating Scheme’ is a certification system for food businesses supplying food directly to consumers, either on or off premise.
- The food establishments are rated based on food hygiene and safety conditions observed at the time of audit. The hygiene rating will be in the form of smileys (1 up to 5) and the certificate should be displayed prominently in the consumer facing area.
- The recognised Hygiene Rating Audit Agencies will be responsible for verifying the compliance with food hygiene and safety procedures laid by FSSAI and get Hygiene Rating.
- The scheme aims to allow consumers to make informed choices/decisions pertaining to the food outlets where they eat by encouraging food businesses to improve their hygiene and safety standards. Currently, this scheme is applicable for Food service establishments (such as hotels, restaurants, cafeteria, dhabhas, etc), sweet shops, bakeries and meat retail stores.
- The recognised Hygiene Rating Audit Agency will verify the compliance with food hygiene and safety procedures laid by FSSAI.
Quality Council of India
- The Quality Council of India (QCI) was set up as a public private partnership model on the model existing in Netherlands at the time, where although the NAB was not owned by the government, yet it was supported by it and was exceedingly used as a third party agency to improve quality in departments and industry.
- QCI thus, came to be organized as an independent autonomous body that worked towards assuring quality standards across all spheres of economic and social activities.
- Key industry associations, i.e. Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), Confederation of Indian Industry(CII) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) became the promoters of the organizers and QCI got established under the Societies Registration Act in 1997 to provide accreditation services in various sectors for product, services and persons.
- The Council is independent and works under the directions of its Governing Body (GB) having equal representation of government, industry and industry associations.
- It does not get funded by the government and is a self-sustaining non-profit organization with its own Memorandum of Association (MOA) and Rule