Council of Common Interest (CCI) last year constituted the committee to develop national standards across the country. On 12th March a meeting held to review progress on the formulation of conformity assessment.
According to the sources, the upper committee has comprised further subcommittees to tackle differences among provinces over the maintenance of quality of food items.
No province wants to give up its power of enforcement of standards of food items regardless of the presence of the national body, PSQCA, for the formulation of standard and its implementation.
In view of the fact CCI also could not develop an accord of enforcement of the quality across the country; it had decided to at least devise a single uniform standard, called ‘Pakistan Standard’, to reign throughout the country.
Punjab and Sindh provinces have formed their own food authorities to accept the regulation and enforcement of food laws and standards of PSQCA. Confer to that the federal government’s authority, responsible for ensuring quality and standard of food items across the country.
As per the PSQCA, a law has mandated the authority to include food items and non-food items in Compulsory Certification Mark Scheme under which the authority has so far notified 105 mandatory items, including 40 food items.
The meeting was attended by secretaries of Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of National Food Security & Research, Ministry of Inter Provincial Coordination, as well as the representatives of the Ministry of Industries and Production,
Board of Investment (BoI), Pakistan Standard and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA), Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination and secretaries of all the provincial food departments including Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJ&K) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB).