Guidelines on Food Safety And Hygiene Under the Mid Day Meal Scheme 

New Delhi: In pursuance of the decision taken by the Empowered Committee headed by Smt Smriti Irani, Union Minister of Human Resource Development in its meeting held on 15th October, 2014, a Committee was constituted under the chairpersonship of the Joint Secretary of the concerned Bureau for finalizing the guidelines on Food Safety and Hygiene under the Mid Day Meal Scheme. The Committee had deliberations with the experts from the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India and other agencies in the field and developed a draft. The draft guidelines were also shared with all the States and UTs.

The   guidelines are primarily based on the food safety and hygiene guidelines that have been issued under the Mid Day Meal Scheme from time to time, selected provisions of the Food Safety and Standards, Regulations 2011 under the Food Safety and Standards Act 2006 as well as the recommendations of the Joint Review Missions. The guidelines are part of an effort to ensure basic standards of food safety and hygiene in school kitchens. These guidelines address both the operational as well as infrastructural aspects for ensuring food safety and hygiene.  The broad guidelines will help the States and the UTs to focus more intensively on the safety aspects of procurement, storage, preparation, serving, waste disposal of food items as well as issues of personal hygiene of students and those involved in cooking and serving of food.

 

In order to effectively implement these guidelines, the States and UTs will need to develop their own standard operating procedures and undertake training of the officials including Cook-cum-Helpers and members of School Management Committees.