The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) on September 21, 2023, issued a notification regarding Empowering Women and Transgender Entrepreneurs in Food Business through Faster Processing of License/Registration Applications.
The following has been stated: -
•The aim of bridge the Gender Gap and fostering equal opportunities by facilitating the participation of women & transgender entrepreneurs in the food business sector, with the approval of the Food Authority, the FSSAI has created a provision in the online Food Safety Compliance System (FOSCOS) portal to identify the persons of Special Category' for faster processing of license/registration applications.
•This provision enables Licensing and Registering Authorities to process such Special Category applications in a 1:1 ratio with regular applications. The identification of women and transgender entrepreneurs shall be conducted at the time of submission of the application for license/registration on the basis of authentication through Aadhaar/PAN Furthermore, methods are being explored for the digital identification of individuals with special abilities.
•The 'User Manual' for accessing and utilizing this provision is attached in Annexure-1 for reference and guidance. It is requested that this circular shall be widely publicized to all stakeholders.
•From now onwards, a system has been implemented that allows licensing and registering authorities to view applications separately, distinguishing between General and Special Categories Accordingly, licensing and registering authorities are directed to process the applications from both categories in a balanced manner, maintaining a one-to-one ratio, until there are no pending applications in either category.
The detailed notification is given in the document attached below.
[Notification No. 15(31)2020/FoSCOS/RCD/FSSAIpt1-Part (1)]
