India, July 9 -- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Maharashtra is set to undergo a major upgrade, with a significant expansion of its laboratory infrastructure and food sample testing capacity, said FDA Commissioner Rajesh Narwekar. The 325 newly recruited food safety officers and the two new upcoming laboratories, will address the earlier shortage of staff, increase the collection of food samples across the state, and allow more samples to be tested.

Narwekar said, "Each food safety officer will be tasked with collecting at least 10 samples. This means around 3,250 samples will be gathered-almost three times more than before."

In addition to the state's three functional FDA laboratories in Mumbai, Sambhajinagar, and Nagpur, Nar...