… that FSSAI is still not alert to safety aspects of quick-delivery food & grocery apps
There are increasing incidents of quick-delivery businesses supplying rotten food, expired products, food items with fungal growth, the latest example was from Delhi. This is worrying for the quick food-delivery ecosystem, among India’s fastest-growing e-commerce businesses, given exploding demand for its convenience. Platforms are pushing deeper. By some estimates, there will be 5,000-5,500 dark stores by end of this fiscal. But, consumers have no idea the status or conditions of the dark store from where quick-commerce superstores, and mushrooming apps, are ferrying food & grocery. Consumers rightly believe – it’s what they pay taxes for, right? – that regulators and authorities must be on the job, with routine inspections of storage and sampling, and raids and penalties, to ensure these companies, and their dark stores storing food supplies, are following the rulebook. Oh, wait. What rulebook? There is none for dark stores, which are licensed as any other food business by nodal regulator FSSAI. That is the grim reality.
FSSAI’s defence invariably is that the onus of implementation is on state-level food safety departments. But implementation isn’t the problem here. Issue is how FSSAI views the quick commerce food delivery business. Dark stores aren’t consumer-facing, neither are they warehouses. They’re not cold storages, which perishables need. Dark stores are a hybrid: not shopfront, not warehouse. They’re a new business entity, brick-and-mortar requirement for wholly digital businesses. So, it is astonishing that FSSAI hasn’t felt the need for a new regulatory framework. Only when there is understanding of how these companies, and their franchises, operate can accountability be established. The second biggest problem is FSSAI’s complaint-based culture of inspections of food businesses. That is ad hoc and piecemeal at best. The third big problem, industry experts say, is that current penalties are small change – “rounding error” – for the quick commerce superstores, ultimately responsible for rotten and expired food items.
The concern over dark stores has been how they’re reshaping the urban commercial landscape, given these fulfilment centres are mostly in dense neighbourhoods, and the parking problem. But food safety is hardly discussed. It’s the bigger problem. The food regulator needs to deliver quick.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
