LAHORE: The Pakistan Standards & Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) has started certification and checking of labels of the food products and working on a comprehensive policy which will be released shortly.

The PSQCA sources said that the steps is being taken following a decision by the 44th meeting of the Council of the Common Interest (CCI) held last year which declared that the PSQCA being a National Standard Body (NSB) is mandated to formulate and notify the standards as ‘Pakistan Standard.’ Labelling and certification marks/logo is the mandate of the federal government/PSQCA, added the sources. They said numerous companies have submitted their applications for certification of their products with the PSQCA. They said that authorizing PSQCA for issuing of certification /certification mark logo and labelling would ensure that no product or factory should have to bear the burden of dual certification while uniform standards should be adopted for the whole of the country.

However, registration of sale of eatables or issuance of license for setting up a factory would remain with the provincial governments.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022