No consignment of spurious foods, sweets found in dist

Aparna Banerji

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, October 18

While pre-Diwali raids in the district have previously been marked by crackdowns across various factories and industries, the raids this year have been confined to collection of samples and no major consignments of khoya or sweets was recovered by the Health Department.

This year, the Health Department has only been able to nab one major establishment owner a few days ago, from whom, many drums of spurious refined oil were recovered. During a raid on October 16, around 500 litres of different types of edible oils contained in eight drums were found.

The oils were being sold as mustard oil, rice bran oil and soybean oil.

In primary investigations, colour and odour of the oils were found to be the same. Moreover, the oil was being sold in the loose form, which is illegal under the Food Safety and Standards Act.

The edible oil was suspected to be mixed with low- quality oil. Civil Surgeon Dr RS Randhawa said, “We have been conducting regular raids and many spurious samples have been seized by teams of the Health Department. Teams are constantly on to drive, holding various raids in different areas of the district and the reports of the samples will be received in a few days.”

As far as big consignments are concerned, a huge consignment of adulterated refined oil was also recovered by the Health Department.

DHO Balwinder Singh could not be contacted despite repeated attempts.

Lakhbir Singh, president of the PAHAL, an NGO, said, “Adulteration is affecting our daily nutrition levels. Not only Diwali raids, but a policy also needs to be devised by the Health Department to check the level of adulteration in food.”

Notably, in the past three years, as many as 670 food samples have failed the quality test in the district, of which, the number of sweets samples are 198 and those of other food items which failed the quality tests are 430.