FSSAI-Coca Cola to train 50,000 street food vendors

New Delhi, Mar 29 (KNN) The Food Safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI) and Coca-Cola India (CCI), have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to train 50,000 street food vendors.

The training is being provided under FSSAI’s project ‘Clean Street Food’ across India over next three years.

The partnership aims to further strengthen FSSAI’s vision to ensure health, hygiene and safety standard of street food for all; along with ensuring social and economic upliftment of street vendor community by helping them in improving quality of offerings.

The MoU, signed by Pawan Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI and Venkatesh Kini, President, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia, seeks to contribute extensively to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Skill India initiative as well as vision of a Healthy India.

As part of this initiative, Coca-Cola India, will closely work with FSSAI in upgrading the eating out experience for the Indian populace at large. While Coca-Cola will be responsible for the program execution through its network of trainers and available infrastructure, FSSAI will ensure the relevance of the training content and shall oversee the overall delivery, FSSAI said in a release.

While addressing the press conference, CEO, FSSAI said, “As small food vendors form an integral part of our society, there is a strong need to create awareness about hygiene and best practices amongst these vendors. This partnership will positively impact the small scale food vendors community and will serve as a strong base towards promoting safe and nutritious food while eating out.”

The training module under the project will focus on the owners and employers at small food service outlets and street food vendors, mostly in the unorganized sector, to understand the basic tenets of food safety and hygiene.

Under the partnership, the program will be rolled out in phased manner with the first leg to be initiated by mid-April in Ludhiana, Punjab. Over the next three years, it plans to expand to 14 other locations through bottling plant network of Coca-cola India covering 9 states (Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Chandigarh, Punjab, Chhattisgarh, Delhi NCR).