FSSAI and Ministry of Consumer Affairs informed the Industry about the new system for redressal of consumer complaints through integration with the ‘Smart Consumer’ mobile app of Department of Consumer Affairs, during the National Conference on ‘Enabling Regulatory Compliance & Connecting with Consumers’.
The conference was jointly organised by Ministry of Consumer Affairs, FSSAI, and GS1 India recently and attended by over 100 companies, including leading brand owners, retailers, and online shopping portals. Some of the participants include Reliance Retail, Big Bazaar, Amazon, Canteen Stores Department, Coca Cola, Paytm, Kellogg’s, Flipkart, Grofers, Walmart, Nestle, Dabur, Patanjali, J&J, HUL, Britannia, Mondelez, Kraft Heinz, ITC, Tata Global Beverages, Mother Dairy, amongst many others.
Shri Pawan Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI, stated that with this integration, no consumer complaint would go unresolved and consumers would gain visibility to FSSAI license number certificates and product recall alerts.
Shri P V Rama Sastry, JS, Department of Consumer Affairs explained how scanning of barcodes (which use GTIN – Global Trade Identification Numbers) on consumer products using the Smart Consumer app would enable consumers to read marking and labelling information with ease, which is otherwise difficult due to small print on product labels.
Leading retailers and brand owners, including Nestle India, Reliance Retail, Canteen Stores Department, Big Bazaar and others shared their experiences of exchanging product data with trading partners using DataKart – a national repository of retailed product data that feeds in information to smart consumer mobile app. They also talked about how DataKart helps them in mitigating challenges in access to quality, up-to-date data on retailed products, including on new product introductions, product withdrawals, active/inactive SKUs, product changes, etc.
Finally, GS1 India provided a detailed roadmap on how Indian Retail Industry could comply with Regulatory requirements and exchange product information amongst stakeholders through DataKart.
Further, the regulators also informed Industry on various Legal Metrology requirements, product recall, and e-commerce guidelines for food business operators.
