One trained supervisor for every 25 food handlers — and the arithmetic plants get wrong

FSSAI's Food Safety Training and Certification programme sets a rule that a surprising number of licensed plants are quietly non-compliant with: every premises must have at least one trained and certified Food Safety Supervisor for every 25 food handlers. Not one per company. One per twenty-five, per premises.

The training is a one-day course with a twenty-question assessment at the end, and the certificate now carries lifetime validity — it was previously two years, which is why some plants hold certificates they believe have expired, and others hold certificates they believe are current when the named person left in 2023.

What it costs

Course fees are regulated and modest: ₹1,200 for Basic, ₹2,360 for Advanced and ₹3,000 for Special courses, per participant. Against a Central licence fee of ₹7,500 a year, it is not the cost that catches plants out — it is the arithmetic. A plant that has grown from 40 to 90 food handlers over three years needs four certified supervisors, not the one it trained when it opened.

The check worth doing this week

Count your food handlers per premises, divide by 25, round up, and compare that against certificates you can physically produce with a currently-employed person's name on them. If those two numbers differ, that is a finding waiting to happen at your next audit.

Sources: FoSTaC training — fees, duration and supervisor ratio; FSSAI FoSTaC portal.