The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Pune has cancelled the licenses of nine food business operators and suspended those of 233 others in Pune in the last financial year for dispensing unsafe and substandard food items violating provisions of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.

“The aim is to ensure that food articles dispensed by the food business operators conform to standards of safety, hygiene and quality. We are stringently enforcing food safety regulations across the state. In Pune, our officials inspected about 8,000 food business establishments between April 2013 and March 2014. Nine licenses were cancelled and 233 were suspended,” said Shashikant Kekare, joint commissioner (food), FDA, Pune.

The new licensing regime was initiated on August 5, 2011, when the Food Safety and Standards Act came into force. The act aims at bringing the food industry under one umbrella by scrapping all old licenses. The food industry needs to be regulated in order to ensure food safety.

Food businesses include hotels, restaurants, owners of small food stalls, dhabas, milk suppliers, fish stall owners, fruit and vegetable vendors, manufacturers, hawkers, small scale industrialists, fair price shop owners, self-help groups among others.