Roadside food sellers to be trained in hygiene

Mumbai: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has initiated a “food security campaign” to check the hygiene of roadside snacks after receiving feedback from city-based hospitals about the large number of people suffering from abdominal pain, diarrhoea and infections. FDA officers even said that they had received letters from unknown persons claiming that consuming roadside food had led to stomach upset.

As part of this campaign, the FDA will train hawkers from all 24 wards of the BMC to maintain personal and stall hygiene while serving food. Shailesh Adhav,

FDA co-commissioner (food), said that twenty hawkers will be trained at a time how to maintain hygiene. Training in terms of maintaining the quality and hygiene of food will go on for 20 days. FDA officials will train hawkers using a projector.

Mr Adhav told The Asian Age, “FDA has initiated a foodsecurity campaign to educate roadside food sellers about what hygiene standards should be maintained by them.

We will be training hawkers of all 24 civic body wards under this campaign. An inquiry of roadside sellers will be conducted across all the wards.”

“FDA officials and inspectors will give them lessons such as wearing caps, aprons and maintaining personal and stall hygiene,” Mr Adhav said. Currently, the campaign is underway in Mumbai but later, it will also be initiated in Thane, Navi Mumbai and so on.