Campaign to adopt 100 food streets

A safe food campaign launched in July will adopt 100 food streets across the country during its first phase, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) said on Sunday.

The "Surakshit Khadya Abhiyan" has been launched by the CII in partnership with the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI), Voluntary Organisation in Interest of Consumer Education (VOICE), and Cargill India.

"In phase one, the target is to adopt 100 food streets across the country, generate awareness on food safety among 10,000 consumers and build capacity on good hygiene and manufacturing practices by training employees of 300 SMEs towards food safety," CII said in a statement here.

The campaign involves country-wide sensitisation sessions on cleaning, hygiene and sanitation for safe food, walkathons and media dissemination programmes for consumers and street food industries.

CII is also organising Food Safety Advocacy and Capacity Building programmes across Delhi, the northeast, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Jamshedpur, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Chennai and Siliguri, among others, the industry chamber said.

Other workshops are also on the anvil, starting mid-October, on good agricultural, manufacturing and hygiene practices in the northeast, in partnership with the ministry of food processing.

NASVI is affiliated with over 880 city-based street food associations with over 600,000 street-food vendors as members.

Supported by the ministry of consumer affairs and public distribution, the campaign is targeted at consumers and food business operators, especially street food vendors.

The focus will also be on sensitising food service providers, such as railways, mid-day meal schemes and mass caterers, on food safety, CII said.