Food Safety or Food Policing?
Why do government priorities so often contrast with what people actually need? Think glittering flyovers and tunnel roads while buses limp along in disrepair, or dog shelters for strays while ignoring waste disposal mechanisms. The latest entrant to this long list of puzzling priorities is the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India’s (FSSAI) proposed plan to license eateries based on whether they serve vegetarian or non-vegetarian food.
The move smacks of a discriminatory approach to regulating eateries with clear bias against meat eaters and meat-serving restaurants (which would most likely be muslim). While food safety remains an issue, the government should re-prioritise its regulation objectives.
The plan aims to promote cultural compliance, customer awareness, and food safety on paper. However, it is a recipe for discrimination, overreach, and misplaced effort.
The Short-term Plan: Every eatery must declare if it serves veg or non-veg food while applying for a license. If an eatery decides to add meat to an already existing business, it needs to reapply for another license.
The Long-term Plan: Create a national database of restaurants, neatly segregated by veg and non-veg. (And here’s a cultural aside: “non-veg” is a uniquely Indian term, which assumes vegetarianism is the default, with everything else being the odd exception. This, in a country where most people do eat meat.)
Cultural Compliance? Or Cultural Policing?
The regulation asks eateries to declare whether they serve non-veg food and specify whether that includes beef or pork. In a country with a majority meat-eating population, this feels less like public information and more like the imposition of one group’s values—particularly those of a Brahminical elite—onto everyone else. The danger is obvious: such rules can become tools for discrimination, especially against Muslim-owned businesses. They reinforce social segregation in a country already struggling with low social capital.
Information Asymmetry?
Restaurants already signal their offerings through signage, menus, advertising, or food delivery apps. There’s no information asymmetry here, so government intervention is unwarranted.
Missing the Real Food Safety Problems
Food safety in India is a serious issue—but the real problems lie in hygiene: - Unsafe handling of food - Contaminated water - Substandard ingredients - Rampant reuse of cooking oil
If the government wants to improve health outcomes, it could start by dismantling protectionist policies that enable the resale of used cooking oil, or by addressing unhygienic conditions in food preparation areas.
While the proposed rules focus on the organised sector, street vendors—who feed millions every day—fall outside this net. If public health is the goal, why ignore them?
Implementation
The plan also mandates that state-level food safety officers inspect 10 “high-risk” businesses each month. “High-risk” here means those serving meat, eggs, and milk. More inspections mean more opportunities for bribes, not necessarily more safety.
Duplication, Not Innovation
The envisioned national database of restaurants already exists—it is maintained more efficiently by food delivery apps and review platforms. Government duplication will only add cost and complexity without adding value.
Wrong Level of Governance
Food safety standards can be set nationally, but inspections should be conducted locally, where context and capacity matter. Centralising this under FSSAI not only violates the principle of subsidiarity, it risks making enforcement less effective.
Bottom line
The proposed regulation is unsound on ethical grounds, impractical given India’s state capacity, misaligned with actual public health needs and socially divisive.. If the government truly wants to improve food safety, it should focus on hygiene, supply chains, and local enforcement—not on dividing our plates into “veg” and “non-veg” camps.
Note: ChatGPT was used to improve readability