Maintain standards prescribed by food safety authorities, hotels told

Tirumala : Providing healthy and hygienic food at affordable prices to the pilgrims visiting Tirumala and ensuring their health safety is the top most priority of the TTD, said Additional EO Ch Venkaiah Chowdary.

Addressing a training programme jointly organised by the health wing of TTD along with the Food Safety Department for the hoteliers at Tirumala under the instructions of TTD EO J Syamala Rao, he said all the eateries should maintain the standards as prescribed by the Food Safety authorities keeping in view the health safety of multitude of visiting pilgrims to Tirumala.

The internal process of running a hotel as per standards should be scrupulously followed by streamlining the cleaning, storing and serving practices, he maintained.

Later, the FSSAI certified trainer from New Delhi Ch Anjaneyulu explained through a power point presentation the Food Safety Management System that included the hygienic and sanitary practices to be followed in all the restaurants and eateries, physical-chemical-biological hazards of food spoilage, wastage disposal plan, display of license in front of their eateries, violation punishments in Food Safety Laws and Acts, other related subjects in an elaborated manner. He said the training imparted to the hoteliers with Food Safety Training and Certification (FoSTaC) is a large-scale training programme which is very much needed for providing healthy and tasty food to the devotees.

TTD Dy EO (Health) Asha Jyothi said, henceforth this training programme will be carried out for all the hoteliers once in every three months and hygiene measures would be assessed at regular intervals in all the eateries at Tirumala.

Tirumala health officer Madhusudhan Rao, G Venkateswara Rao, food controller, Tirupati district, Jagadeesh, food safety officer, Tirumala, hoteliers of Tirumala and TTD Annaprasadam canteen staff were also present.