VATIS UPDATE Article

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has issued a notice for operationalisation of Food Safety and Standards (Food Import) Regulations, 2016. As per the notice, these norms will be applicable with immediate effect and no food article shall be allowed to be cleared from the Customs unless it has 60% shelf-life at the time of its clearance from the Customs.

According to the notice, the authority, may adopt a risk-based framework and inspection process for clearance of imported food articles. FSSAI, for this purpose, shall profile the importer, custom house agents, imported products, manufacturers of imported products, country of origin, source country of the consignment, port of entry, compliance history and any other parameters deemed fit for profiling the risk associated with the commodity. The authority may also introduce Pre Arrival Document Review (PADR) for regulating the imports.

According to sources, once the ministry develops a software-based procedure to use a risk-based criteria for clearance instead of sampling from each consignment, these norms could further be reviewed for speedy clearances. The ministry’s notice earlier stated that the new system of clearance would commence from March 1, 2016, and only those consignments which come under predefined risk parameters will be subjected to sampling based on a software programme.