NEW DELHI, July 25: The Food Processing Ministry is planning to change the norms governing the use of additives in food processing. The ministry is presently considering the proposal made by the industry associations for giving more powers to the good manufacturing practices (GMP) adopted by the manufacturers for the use of additives.

At present, these are governed by the Fruits and Products Order (FPO) of 1955.These changes, if carried out, will be in addition to the recent amendments made in the FPO. According to the recent proposal, the industry has urged that the limit of additives used in the food processing should not be a part of the order, rather the good manufacturing practices adopted by the manufacturer should decide the limit of their usage in the products.

Moreover, it is urged that the specifications of the manufacturing facility should continue to be a part of the order, but at the same time the minute details and facilities required should be dealt with the good manufacturing practices, since the manufacturers is more aware of the necessities.

These requests have been made mainly after the ministry carried out some major amendments in the order for regulating hygiene conditions of manufacturing and specifications of the product.Since the industry was not happy with certain provisions of the order, so they made a representation to the ministry in March. Following this, the FPO was liberalised in May this year.

The most important amendment to the order is that the manufacture can get the licence renewed upto 10 years, while earlier the manufacture had to get it renewed it annually.

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