FSSAI festive drive: 3,280 tonnes of food seized, 52 licences cancelled

The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) said on Saturday, 7 November 2026, that a nationwide enforcement drive it ran from Tuesday, 1 September to Thursday, 5 November 2026 led to the seizure of about 3,280 tonnes of food, worth roughly Rs 82 crore. During the festive-season drive, food safety officers inspected 56,431 food businesses across the country. The regulator cancelled 52 licences, suspended 1,133 and sealed more than 300 establishments. Paneer, ghee, milk and sweets, the staples of the Navratri-to-Deepavali season in Indian homes, were among the products seized.

In the Indian festive calendar, food is part of the ritual. Sweets are offered at the home shrine and shared with neighbours, ghee lights the diya and goes into prasad, and paneer and khoya fill the kitchens of every family preparing for guests. These are exactly the foods whose demand peaks between Navratri and Deepavali, and exactly the foods that adulterators target, because milk is short and prices rise. A national count from the food regulator puts a number on a problem that households have long suspected each festive season.

The figures also show how the checks work. Most of the action is corrective rather than punitive. More than 10,000 businesses received improvement notices, a step that asks them to put problems right. Suspensions came next, at more than 1,100, and cancellation, the strongest step, was used 52 times. Through September and October, state food safety departments also ran their own raids, from dairy checks in Punjab to sweet-shop inspections in Delhi and Maharashtra; those state figures cover different periods and are counted separately.

There is a gap in the numbers that matters for readers. Of the 43,939 samples collected, only 23,648 had been analysed when the results were announced. The rest were still with laboratories, so the final count of failed samples could rise.

For families keeping the festive traditions, the figures are a reason to know where their sweets, ghee and paneer come from. The regulator's own focus on milk products and sweets, set out in its letter to states in late September, shows which foods it considers most at risk at this time of year.

Peepals calculation: 2,273 failed samples out of 23,648 analysed means about one sample in ten failed (2,273 / 23,648 = 9.6%). Only about 54% of the samples collected had been tested by 5 November (23,648 / 43,939 = 53.8%). Over the 66-day drive, officers carried out about 855 inspections a day (56,431 / 66 = 855), and the seized food was worth about Rs 249 a kilogram on average (Rs 81.80 crore / 32,79,570 kg = Rs 249). Our calculation from the reported figures.

Short-term: Businesses that lost or had their licences suspended cannot trade until they comply, and seized stock is held while lab tests are completed.

Long-term: Results from the roughly 20,000 samples still being tested will show how widespread the problem was this season.

Who is affected: Sweet shops, dairies, ghee and paneer makers, and every household that buys festive food from the market.

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