The United States Pharmacopeia (USP) has recently inducted Dr H G Koshia as one of the members of the council of experts in its food ingredient committee for the year 2015-20. Induction to this committee opens up plethora of opportunities for Dr Koshia who is the commissioner of Gujarat FDCA to be part of key strategies and decision-making process on this subject matter.

As a part of this 16-member committee, Dr Koshia will also have a strong role to play in all the meetings and deliberations required towards addressing changes, issues and challenges of food ingredients for the USP. Along with this, he will also be required to play an important role by sharing his expert views for revising regulations, examining and being part of the new studies for the same.

“It is indeed a great honor to be inducted by the USP and represent India at a global forum. Especially since it opens up lot of avenues to share and learn the best from the other to apply the same for the betterment of the general public. It certainly is turning out to huge learning experience for me, since apart from sharing my knowledge in this field, I am also getting exposed to an equally exciting platform that allows me to interact and work with experts from across the globe.”

The first meeting of the new council of experts was recently concluded in the US where experts from different regulatory bodies, scientists from the independent organisations as well as private companies met and associated for the first time since being inducted into the committee.

Around 400 council of experts, belonging to different committee from across the globe, attended this meet. Interestingly, Dr Koshia was the only Indian selected for this post of this particular committee, especially from the regulatory agency.

The members are inducted based on their regulatory expertise and knowledge in the respective field and done on voluntary basis. It is understood that 70 per cent of its members consist of individuals from US and Europe, 5 per cent from Asia and the rest from the Australian and African countries.

It is important to note that USP is mandatorily followed in the US, by the US FDA, while outside US it is fully followed by 39 countries which do not have their own pharmacopeia. Interestingly, over 140 countries across the globe including India partially follow the USP.