Overview
- Acting under Section 16(5) of the Food Safety and Standards Act, FSSAI directed every State and Union Territory to launch a Special Enforcement Drive against adulteration and misbranding of key dairy products.
- State food safety teams must inspect licensed and unlicensed units across the supply chain, collect enforcement samples, verify FBO registrations, and trace sources of suspected adulteration.
- Mandated actions for violations include seizures, recalls, licence suspension or cancellation, and closure of illegal units, with Commissioners of Food Safety and FSSAI Regional Directors overseeing execution.
- Authorities must upload inspection and sampling data to the FoSCoS portal in real time, file fortnightly enforcement reports, and tighten inter-state coordination to restrict the movement of unsafe products.
- The push follows recent detections and intelligence inputs, with parliamentary data showing high failure rates such as nearly 47% for paneer and other milk products in Punjab, and states have been told to sensitise hotels, restaurants, caterers and sweet shops on procuring genuine dairy items.