When will the society wake up to take this cause that is affecting our younger lot? Even Milk – the very first food consumed by infants – has not been spared by these mindless, insane suppliers and vendors. Do we need ‘road-block, rail-roko andolan’ like movements for every single issues in the country? It is high time that the Government issues Laws providing ‘death penalty’ and nothing less for food-adulteration and also drug-adulteration (selling drugs actually having zero-potency, containing barely limestone, etc).
When our entire system in the government is adulterated, such adulteration of milk, food, water contamination, etc. is not a great thing. This would not have been possible without the support of powerful people behind them besides, they are aware that the law will take its own course which is very far off. For the sake of money, these people will go to any extent to give slow poison to people.
Quite often India termed as highest milk producer in the world but unfortunately we don’t have a single drop of Grade A milk for exporting to any developed country! All these decades health dept failed to do anything other than blaming each other- leave alone controlling synthetic milk plants in Delhi. Initial quality itself is a problem since feed,fodder and water are fully contaminated with fertilizers, pesticides and antibiotics not to speak of subsequent loose administration.Let Amul/NDDB people go to Goa to give or receive training!
The prime duty of a democratic government is to ensure that the citizen get unadulterated food at an affordable price. Have you ever heard a discussion, even for an hour, in parliament or any state assembly? Not even the prime minister is bothered.If he is, he could have moved the Govt machinery. Nothing is going to happen. What we should do to maintain health is to totally avoid milk. Politicians may be getting their cut for adulteration.
It just indicates that India is a lawless country. where criminals can do any thing under the nose of police and officers with bribes. It also shows that we are so dumb in planning that we have not planned for the growth of milk and its supply with growth of population and economy. How will the nation cope up with gap in demand and supply. So people are selling detergent solution as milk and our failed machinery is unable to check any one. PM and health and agriculture ministers must own a responsibility for it.
Source – Times of India newspaper dated 10th Jan 2012
70% of milk in Delhi, country is adulterated
NEW DELHI: Beware, your daily glass of good health could actually be doing you harm. As much as 70% of milk samples picked up from the capital by a government agency failed to conform to standards.
Of the 71 samples randomly taken from Delhi for testing by the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), 50 were found to be contaminated with glucose and skim milk powder (SMP), which is usually added to milk in the lean season to enhance volumes.
Elsewhere in the 33 states and UTs study, milk was found adulterated with detergent, fat and even urea, besides the age-old dilution with water. Across the country, 68.4% of the samples were found contaminated.
Only in Goa and Puducherry did 100% of the samples tested conform to required standards. At the other end were West Bengal, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Mizoram, where not a single sample tested met the norms.
Other prominent states fared just a shade better. Around 89% of the samples tested from Gujarat, 83% from Jammu & Kashmir, 81% from Punjab, 76% from Rajasthan, 70% from Delhi and Haryana and 65% from Maharashtra failed the test. Around half of the samples from Madhya Pradesh (48%) also met a similar fate.
States with comparatively better results included Kerala where 28% of samples did not conform to the FSSAI standards, Karnataka (22%), Tamil Nadu (12%) and Andhra Pradesh (6.7%).
The samples were collected randomly and analysed from 33 states totaling a sample size of 1,791. Just 31.5% of the samples tested (565) conformed to the FSSAI standards while the rest 1,226 (68.4%) failed the test.
A study conducted by Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) across 33 states has found that milk was adulterated with detergent, fat and even urea, besides the age-old practice of diluting it with water. Across the country, 68.4% of the samples were found contaminated.
These were sent to government laboratories like Department of Food and Drug Testing of Puducherry, Central Food Laboratory in Pune, Food Reasearch and Standardization Laboratory in Ghaziabad, State Public Health Laboratory in Guwahati and Central Food Laboratory, Kolkata, for testing against presence of adulterants like fat, neutralizers, hydrogen peroxide, sugar, starch, glucose, urea, detergent, formalin and vegetable fat.
Detergent was found in 103 samples (8.4%). “This was because milk tanks were not properly washed. Detergents in milk can cause health problems,” FSSAI official told TOI. The non-conforming samples in rural areas numbered 381 (31%) out of which 64 (16.7%) were packet milk and 317 (83.2%) were loose samples.
In urban areas, the number of non-confirming samples were 845 (68.9%) out of which 282 (33.3%) were packed and 563 (66.6%) were loose.
The most common adulteration was that of fat and solid not food (SNF), found in 574 (46.8%) of the non-conforming samples. This, scientists say, is because of dilution of milk with water. The second highest parameter of non-conformity was skim milk powder in 548 samples (44.69%) which includes presence of glucose in 477 samples. Glucose could have been added to milk probably to enhance SNF.
The report asked state enforcement authorities to check whether the new FSSAI rules are being complied with. An earlier first-of-its-kind study of milk boiling habits that involved 2,400 women across eight major cities had found that Chandigarh leads the pack in boiling milk, doing it more than three times a day. While 84% women in Kolkata boiled milk for more than five minutes, about 46% of women in Pune preferred to boil milk in high temperatures. The study, by the Indian Medical Academy, said, “About 49% boil milk more than thrice before consumption. Around 56% boil it for more than 5 minutes, and 73% don’t stir while boiling,” said Dr Pawan Gupta, IMA.
Times View
This only confirms that food adulteration is common in India. Even milk, consumed primarily by children, isn’t spared. What’s particularly worrying is the kind of substances used to adulterate, including toxic chemicals. This shows the trade off between the risk of getting caught and the ‘reward’ of huge profits is skewed heavily in favour of the latter. The government must focus on raising the risks to the adulterator. One way of doing this is by hiking the penalty, including making it analogous to attempt to murder in extreme cases. It’s equally important to regularly check foodstuff for adulteration and ensure speedy trials.
Warrior
