2^nd International Food Regulatory Summit,2008
"Delivering Consumer Choice, Health & Safety"
www.foodregulatorysummit.org
16-17 October 2008; Radisson MBD Hotel, Noida

A rising internationalization of tastes and change in consumer lifestyle are fuelling a rapid growth in the value added segment of the Food Industry - for both fresh and processed products. A variety seeking consumer and seasonality of agricultural raw material are now making enormous demands for innovation in the food sector with regards to taste, convenience and shelf life expansion. The Food Industry is now gearing up to provide a wide range of choices to the consumer in these areas and very importantly, in areas related to health and nutrition delivery. Such innovations and the need for flexibility in developing recipes are significantly altering the contours of Food Industry across the globe.

In this context, the role of Food Regulatory regime that support such drives are assuming paramount importance.

Very importantly, Food Safety and Regulatory considerations are now moving from pure safety issues to issues of enabling long-term health and nutrition of their respective populations, which are also finding importance on discussions at global forums of the CODEX and WTO.

Enormous 'thought' and 'action' leaderships are happening across the globe in this area with special reference to ways and means of moving away from traditional Food Safety and Regulatory regimes to those which encourage fast and sustainable delivery of consumer choice, health and safety.

Such experiences are of significant relevance to India, which on the one hand has a rapidly growing Food Industry, a large section of which is developing capabilities for global participation and on the other hand, the food safety and regulatory regime in India is poised to revisit its food safety and regulatory regime with the recent enactment of the new Food Safety and Standards Act and the constitution of Food Safety and Standards Authority.

CII had organized the 1^st International Food Regulatory Summit - "Aligning India to the World", along with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO): with the objective of defining the "guiding principles" for India's new Food Regulatory Regime. Time is now ripe for the further discussion on "operationalization" of these principles by leveraging global inputs and experiences.

The 2^nd International Food Regulatory Summit, organized on 16-17 October in Noida, in cooperation with Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of Food Processing Industries, has played a crucial role in bringing global inputs at the time when the Food Safety and Standards Authority has been constituted which will now rapidly move towards defining the contours of the new Food regulatory regime in India.

The CII agenda calls for the development of an innovation friendly food regulatory regime for India thereby providing a conducive environment to the industry, which is competitive, functions freely while adequately safe guarding consumer interests. This CII’s continuing endeavor has once again built up an International platform to discuss and debate upon the critical issues of concern.