GUWAHATI: A workshop on the Chai Sahyog app was held on Thursday at the auditorium of the North Eastern Tea Association (NETA), Golaghat. The application called Chai Sahyog is an initiative of Tea Board of India which will help in tracking and traceability of green tea leaves collected from small tea growers and will bring transparency in the system, stated a press release.
The demand for safe, healthy, and high-quality food has made food traceability a necessity to compete in the global food market. The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) defines “food traceability” as “the ability to discern, identify, and follow the movement of a food or substance through all stages of production, processing, and distribution.”
Therefore, in order to ensure the effective tracking of each food traceability stage, the Tea Board of India has taken this new initiative to guarantee the continuity of information, safety, and transparency in tea production. This application suite will have five applications and six web portals; each stakeholder has a designated role in the app to streamline the process of green tea leaf collection from the field to the factory.
“The workshop was very successful with a large participation of tea manufacturing units of Golaghat district. All present in the workshop downloaded the app on their mobile phones and suggested a few measures to make it user-friendly. The tea manufacturing units will have to use the factory leaf collection app and the factory manager app whereas the small tea growers/leaf agents/gardens/estates will use the growers' app and aggregator app. We will work together with the Tea Board for successful implementation of the app”, said Sunil Jallan, Chairman, NETA.