In the wake of the milk adulteration incident in Rajahmundry, Food Safety officials conducted inspections across various milk booths, collecting milk samples to check whether quality and safety standards are being maintained, in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday, February 25, 2026
| Photo Credit: RAJU V
Two suspected cases of food poisoning reported this month, one at a private school in Indore in Madhya Pradesh, and another at a popular eatery in Bhiwandi in Maharashtra, which affected over 200 people have once again highlighted the need for strengthening the implementation of the Food Safety and Standards (FSS) Act.
As per the latest Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India report, a total of 1,122 people died due to food poisoning in India in 2024.
Such avoidable deaths should be seen in the context of lapses in the implementation of the Act, as revealed by the government’s own State Food Safety Index released last for 2023-24. The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) measures this index for all States and Union Territories based on five key parameters: human resources and institutional data, compliance, food testing infrastructure and surveillance, training and capacity building, and consumer empowerment.
While a strong correlation could not be established, the index showed that States that saw high numbers of food poisoning cases also tended to have low or moderate scores on the index.
Nearly three-fourths of all States and Union Territories scored less than 50 out of the highest-possible score of 100. Jharkhand, where over 130 persons died of food poisoning in 2024, scored 26.5. Uttar Pradesh, which reported over 200 casualties in 2024, scored 44.25.
The FSS Act mandates periodic inspections and analysis of food samples from all registered Food Business Operators (FBOs). An amendment to the Act notified this month has made the frequency of the inspections to be based on a dynamic risk-based assessment of all FBOs, depending on the type of establishment, their past records and other such factors. While the amended provisions are yet to be implemented, FSSAI data for the year 2024-25 showed that inspections conducted and food samples analysed by various States were much lower when compared with the number of registered FBOs.
For instance, only 20,877 samples were lifted in Maharashtra which has over 1.8 lakh registered or active FBO licences, as per the data available with the Food Safety Compliance System.
With the effective implementation of the regulations largely dependent on authorities working at the central and State levels, data showed that while the FSSAI is responsible for ensuring overall coordination, it is the State Food Safety Authorities who are primarily responsible for enforcement at the field level. However, these institutes suffer from vacancies.
The FSSAI, which has a sanctioned strength of 822 officers, saw vacancies increase from about 30% to almost 40% in the last five years. Further, data submitted in response to a question in the Rajya Sabha in March this year showed that only 2,997 of the sanctioned positions of 4,208 Food Safety Officers (FSO) across all States and UTs have been filled as of the third quarter of FY 2025-26.
The World Health Organization’s Foodborne Disease Estimates (2026) estimated that unsafe food causes around 866 million illnesses and 1.5 million deaths annually. It also stated that 57.1 million days of Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) were lost in 2021 from foodborne diseases, and 30% of this burden was borne by children under 5 years.
Though the total foodborne disease burden has declined since 2000, a country-wise analysis of the rate of years of life lost due to foodborne diseases showed that India ranked 15th, along with several low-income African nations.
The data for charts were sourced from Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India and the World Health Organisation
Published – June 30, 2026 08:00 am IST
