ORIGINAL PAPER Driving factors of food safety standards in India: learning from street-food vendors’ behaviour and attitude A. Amarender Reddy 1 & Sandra Ricart 2 & Timothy Cadman 3 Received: 3 June 2019 /Accepted: 18 May 2020 # International Society for Plant Pathology and Springer Nature B.V. 2020 Abstract Risks exist anywhere along the food supply chain; however, the vast majority of negative safety outcomes occur during the handling, preparation, storage, retail and vending of food, and disposing of waste. This study examined the food safety standards followed by street-food vendors in two large cities of India, Hyderabad and Delhi in 2017 after the introduction of the Food Safety and Standards Rules. A survey was conducted in different socioeconomic groups among 200 street-food vendors to understand the compliance and practice of food safety standards in India. Only about one-third of the street-food vendors had registered to run food-vending shops, and most street-food vendors are not following basic food safety principles like wearing apron, access to tap water, were not able to use soap for cleaning utensils, and many did not have refrigerators to store food. The results show that vendors in high-income localities with higher education levels and duly registered were following more safety standards. From a policy perspective, the results show that India’s food safety standards are on a par with those of most developed countries, but that their actual implementation by street-food vendors is not duly assured. To avoid this situation, an exchange of experiences between street-food vendors and consumers should be promoted. “Clean street-food clubs” should be encouraged as one mechanism to recognize street vendors’ needs and to learn from consumers’ demands, so that the awareness of street-food vendors towards food safety standards is strengthened. Keywords Food safety standards . Street-food vendors . Behaviour . Delhi . Hyderabad . India 1 Introduction The rise in living standard, along with consumer concerns about health and food hygiene, is leading to a growing de- mand for food safety across the world. Accordingly, food safety regulations have become stringent worldwide (Richards et al. 2016; Lowder et al. 2017). Despite reasonable food safety standards rules, food hygiene remains poor in some developing countries, as is the case in India, for example (Smilovic et al. 2015; Das et al. 2018). India has had its share of public controversy around food, and the federal govern- ment enacted the Food Safety and Standards Act 2006, and created the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India in 2011 in response. Poor food safety practices are generally associated with low incomes and poverty. Despite some im- provement in food security across all countries including India, food safety issues remain unaddressed, dominating pub- lic discourse due to health issues arising from food-borne dis- eases. In India, food safety has become a major issue especial- ly with respect to the level of quality assurance to consumers (Jha et al. 2013). Although food safety risks exist in any part of the food supply chain, the vast majority of food safety incidents occur during food retail and vending, food handling, preparation, storage and disposing of waste, or due to produc- ing foodstuffs with inferior inputs (Chen et al. 2018). Standards, ethics and law all play a critical role in systems seeking to demonstrate food integrity (Fagotto 2014). Risks * Sandra Ricart sandra.ricart@ua.es A. Amarender Reddy anugu.amarender.reddy@gmail.com Timothy Cadman t.cadman@griffith.edu.au 1 Centre Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (ICAR-CRIDA), Hyderabad, India 2 Water and Territory Research Group, Interuniversity Institute of Geography, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain 3 Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law, Griffith University, Nathan, Australia Food Security https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-020-01048-5