FSSAI urged to tighten wheat testing standards with crop-specific safety guidelines

The Wheat Products Promotion Society (WPPS) has formally asked FSSAI to publish wheat-specific, risk-based sampling and testing guidelines, in a letter dated August 26, 2026, addressed to FSSAI chairperson Punya Salila Srivastava and CEO Rajit Punhani.

WPPS Chairman Ajay Goyal sent the letter on behalf of an industry that processes one of India's most consumed staple grains. The request covers the full enforcement chain: how commercial lots are defined, how samples are drawn from aggregated grain supplies, how often testing happens, and what triggers escalation when results are borderline. Goyal was explicit that health-based food-safety standards should stay fully protective. What he wants changed is the control and enforcement architecture around those standards, not the standards themselves.

What changed

Right now, FSSAI's sampling and testing rules are largely generic across food categories. Wheat arrives at mills and processors from thousands of small farms, aggregated through mandis, warehouses, and farmer producer organisations before it becomes atta, maida, or semolina. That aggregation makes representative sampling genuinely difficult: a single composite sample drawn from a 100-tonne lot may not reflect pesticide or mycotoxin contamination that is unevenly distributed through the grain.

The WPPS letter identifies several specific gaps.

First, there is no single consolidated map showing which pesticide maximum residue limits (MRLs) apply to wheat and wheat flour, which legal notification set each limit, and whether the relevant pesticide is still registered for use in India. Goyal singled out Chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate insecticide widely used in grain storage, and asked FSSAI to clarify its current enforceable MRL for wheat and wheat flour. Chlorpyrifos has faced tightening restrictions in the European Union and the United States over neurodevelopmental concerns, and its regulatory status in India has not been publicly consolidated in one place that processors can easily reference.

Second, aflatoxin surveillance for wheat is not risk-tiered. Aflatoxins are mycotoxins produced by Aspergillus moulds under warm, humid storage conditions. FSSAI sets a limit of 30 parts per billion total aflatoxins for cereals and cereal products under the Food Safety and Standards (Contaminants, Toxins and Residues) Regulations, 2011. The WPPS letter asks for a surveillance framework that intensifies testing in regions or storage systems with a prior history of higher contamination, rather than applying uniform frequency everywhere.

Third, the terminology used to describe insect infestation in wheat flour lacks measurable, standardised categories, which creates inconsistency in enforcement across different FSSAI-notified labs.

To fix these gaps, WPPS has proposed a joint technical working group that would include FSSAI's Science and Standards, Regulatory Compliance, and Quality Assurance divisions alongside the Department of Food and Public Distribution, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, the Ministry of Food Processing Industries, FSSAI-notified accredited laboratories, and grain scientists. The group would design the wheat-specific guidelines and oversee a two-season national wheat surveillance pilot covering major producing regions, storage systems, and supply channels before any numerical revision of pesticide or mycotoxin limits is considered.

Goyal also proposed a "Wheat Safety Data Passport", a standardised minimum data set that organised suppliers, warehouses, mandis, farmer producer organisations, and public agencies would maintain. This is essentially a traceability document covering approved supplier records, moisture control, fumigation logs, and pest control history, aligned with Section 80 of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, which deals with due diligence as a defence for food business operators.

FSSAI has not publicly responded to the letter. The regulator has not released a timeline for any wheat-specific guideline, and no draft notification is currently open for public comment on the FSSAI website.

What buyers and cooks should do

For consumers buying packaged wheat flour, the immediate practical reality is that the regulatory gaps WPPS describes are in enforcement and surveillance, not in the written limits themselves. FSSAI's MRL and mycotoxin limits for wheat products are on the books. The problem is that testing frequency, sampling method, and MRL clarity have not kept pace with how grain actually moves through India's supply chain.

That means a few things worth acting on now.

Buying from brands that publish third-party lab test results or carry FSSAI's FOSTAC-trained quality assurance credentials gives some additional confidence, though it is not a guarantee. Brands that disclose their supplier traceability practices, even briefly on packaging or their website, are at least signalling awareness of the upstream aggregation problem Goyal describes.

For people managing gluten sensitivity or wheat allergy, the contamination risks discussed here (pesticide residues, aflatoxins) are separate from gluten content. Aflatoxin exposure is a concern for everyone eating wheat products regularly, not just those with dietary restrictions. Storing atta in a cool, dry, airtight container at home limits further mould growth after purchase, since aflatoxins can continue to accumulate in warm, humid conditions.

For those who prefer ancient or heritage wheat varieties such as Khapli (emmer) or Bansi, which are often sold by smaller mills with shorter supply chains, the same logic applies: ask whether the supplier tests for pesticide residues and mycotoxins, and whether those results are available on request.

The WPPS proposal, if FSSAI acts on it, would make it easier for both processors and consumers to get straight answers about what is in their wheat. Until a wheat-specific guideline is published, the consolidated MRL map Goyal asked for does not exist in one public document, and the Chlorpyrifos question remains open.