Beyond Street Food: The Changing Regulatory Gaze on Food Safety

• Maharashtra FDA suspends licences of eateries, canteens and a quick-commerce warehouse

• Bengaluru inspections find expired, rotten and poorly stored food at five-star hotels

• Food-safety lapses at branded chains challenge the idea that premium means hygienic

Food safety concerns and adulteration have been in the news for some time now. But what has happened since late July 2026 has exceeded even the most paranoid person's worst imagination. To present a very brief timeline, in late July and early August 2026, the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suspended several licenses. This includes a school meal supplier, two IIT Bombay hostel messes, and three Bombay High Court canteens. 

The situation was further escalated in Bengaluru, where 30 food safety teams inspected 26 three- and five-star hotels across the city. In these high-end hotels, expired milk, rotten or poorly stored meat, fungal growth on vegetables, expired bakery products, and unhygienic storage were found. 

On 12th August, the Maharashtra FDA suspended the food business licenses of four Domino's outlets, three of them in Mumbai, over food safety or hygiene violations. FDA inspection of the Apollo Hospital kitchen on Bannerghatta Road in Bangalore also found expired maida, stale bread, and misbranded products. Apart from public eating facilities such as luxury hotels, restaurants, canteens, hostel messes, and hospitals, quick-commerce warehouses have also come under the scanner. The Maharashtra FDA suspended the food license of the quick commerce group Blinkit's Malad West dark store in Mumbai after severe hygiene violations were found.  

This story tells us that the regulatory gaze has finally shifted upward in the food hierarchy. Historically, food safety enforcement has largely been associated with street vendors, small eateries, and informal food businesses. We regularly come across news reports in which street-food vendors and small eateries are asked to maintain basic hygiene protocols: wearing gloves, using fresh oil, maintaining clean utensils, and so on. 

But this recent crackdown on luxury eating-out spaces, five-star hotels, branded chains, hospitals, and even quick-commerce warehouses exposes how faulty the understanding of hygiene has been.  

Sociological studies have shown how historically, hygiene has been used as a way of discriminating against lower-caste, religious and ethnic-minority food practices. Certain foods (non-vegetarian, fermented, etc.), cooking methods (fermentation), smells, ingredients, and modes of consumption have been perceived as dirty, unclean, or polluting. Interestingly, Rajkot, Vadodara, Bhavnagar and Ahmedabad in Gujarat had banned the sale of non-vegetarian food in 2021, citing hygiene issues, hurting religious sentiments and causing traffic snarls. 

In the same state, there is now a ban on the production, storage, transportation, distribution, and sale of unstandardized analogue paneer, cheese, and butter. Public health concerns were cited, along with the need to protect consumers and the state's dairy sector.  

 This makes us think about how food safety cannot be reduced to asking individual consumers to check labels, identify adulteration, or eat at home. That shifts the responsibility for a systemic problem to the individual consumer. It also means placing the onus on women to cook at home, as it is very often a gendered household responsibility. Having safe, clean public eating places is also critical in easing such gendered domestic responsibilities. The question, therefore, is not just whether consumers are making the correct food choices. We also need to ask whether the institutions responsible for food safety are fulfilling their responsibilities.  

The developments of the past few weeks show that food safety is not simply a problem of ingredients, but is rooted in the entire food chain. This also highlights the uneven implementation of regulations in the Indian context. The case of global food brands is particularly revealing because they represent the kind of standardised food hygiene often contrasted with small eateries. If we take Domino's as an example, it receives a very good hygiene rating in the United Kingdom for its food handling and cleanliness. In certain enterprises operating across Australia and Asian markets, Domino's itself identifies expired products, pest presence, chemical cross-contamination, and poor employee hygiene as examples of critical violations. 

In fact, the first time that there has been an incident at Domino's. In June 2025, the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission imposed a ₹1 lakh fine on Domino's Pizza after a dead honeybee was allegedly found in a pizza purchased by two customers in Mohali. What we see, therefore, is a pattern of food-safety or hygiene-related violations in the Indian context. This is despite other Domino's outlets in Maharashtra receiving five-star hygiene ratings from the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI. In the Indian case, there is unevenness: some outlets maintain hygiene while others don’t. By contrast, in the UK, every outlet received a rating of at least four. In fact, this eerily reminds me of how Nestle adds sugar to infant milk sold in poorer countries, ignoring the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) anti-obesity guidelines for Europe. The Nestle case shows that corporations find it easier to violate regulations in countries such as India.  

 The contradiction is striking. This shows that hygiene cannot be automatically associated with a particular food brand. It requires accountability and enforcement of regulations. These violations at high-end eateries highlight the need to move beyond the simple binary of clean versus unclean food and take a broader view of social spaces, from street-side eateries to luxury dining establishments.  

In fact, many netizens who expressed shock at these incidents came from a position of wondering how, despite spending a chunk of their hard-earned money, they don't have access to good-quality food. It is clear that even though their nature is premium dining, they do not take care of public health. Thus, it should make us reconsider the social and cultural assumptions through which certain foods and brands are associated with cleanliness.   

India did not have a vibrant eating-out culture before the liberalisation of the Indian economy. Much of it was rooted in how outside food is seen as suspicious, as well as in how women have been held responsible for providing nutritious and tasty food to their families. As we have gradually built vibrant public eating out and ordering-in cultural practices, these kinds of food safety concerns and violations can make us rethink the progress which had been made.  

(Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the organisation.)