Telangana falls to 24th place in FSSAI Food Safety Rankings: Is your food safe?

In the recent SFSI rankings, Telangana secured a disappointing 35.75 marks out of 100. The state underperformed across all food safety parameters, particularly in consumer empowerment, where it scored only 2 marks, and in Training and Capacity Building, with just 1 mark. The rankings reflect the state's low performance in areas such as compliance, food testing, and infrastructure, highlighting significant challenges to food safety standards in Telangana.

Hyderabad: How safe is the food that you eat outside? This question should be of a major concern for every food lover in Hyderabad, as Telangana State ranks a dismal 24th place out of 28 Indian States and 8 UTs, in the State Food Safety Index (SFSI)-2023-24, released by Food Safety Standards of India (FSSAI).

In the SFSI rankings, rather shockingly, the State just managed to secure 35.75 marks out of a total of 100 marks. The FSSAI rankings were on the basis of specific food safety parameters and Telangana State performed worse in all of them. In fact, it secured just 2 marks in the consumer empowerment category and one mark in the Training and Capacity Building category.

---

The rest of the parameters in which all the Indian states and UTs were judged by the FSSAI for its annual SFSI rankings included Human Resources and Institutional Data, Compliance, Food Testing-Infrastructure and Surveillance.

In Food Testing and Surveillance, Telangana State secured 18 marks while in compliance, it secured 11 marks. In the last parameter, i.e. Human Resources and Institutional Data, Telangana State has secured just 3.75 marks in the FSSAI rankings.

Every year, based on the performance of States and Union Territories (UTs), FSSAI evaluates them on specific food safety parameters. These parameters are set by FSSAI and, while they can be adjusted annually to incorporate the latest activities, initiatives, or emerging issues, the core parameters remain consistent, the FSSAI said.

The top performing States in the SFSI 2023-24 rankings were Kerala, which secured 73.75 marks followed by Tamilnadu with 67 marks. At third rank was Jammu and Kashmir with 64.25 marks, while Gujarat came fourth with 61.75 marks.

What Telangana must do to improve food safety standards?

Training and capacity building for all stakeholders in the food supply chain, enhancing food testing capabilities for effective monitoring, advanced testing facilities, more investments in infrastructure like modern storage facilities and focusing on educating consumers of proper food handling, storage, and preparation, were some of the challenges that needs to be addressed, FSSAI said.