Just about a week after things turned sour for Verka with a rival MlA allegedly showing it to be substandard, a slew of directions and decisions on Wednesday flowed from the Punjab Government as a damage control measure.
Starting from its own house, the state Vigilance Department on Wednesday raided Verka’s all milk plants across the state, including ludhiana and Mohali, simultaneously. Besides, a meeting between the Tandarust Punjab mission director and the Progressive Dairy Farmers’ Association was held to devise a comprehensive strategy to check milk adulteration.
That was not all! The government has also made it mandatory to observe every Friday as ‘Food Awareness Day’ under Tandarust Punjab Mission under which special awareness camps would be organized to make people aware about standards of food safety to lead healthy and disease- free life.
“It is high time for consumers to realize that ‘everything white is not milk’,” said Tandarust Punjab mission director Kahan Singh Pannu, who on Wednesday declared that the State Government will come down heavily upon the milk adulterators.
Pannu said that monitoring committees would be constituted in every district, under the chairmanship of Deputy Commissioners, which will include the representatives of Health and Dairy Department along with the members of Progressive Dairy Farmers’ Association (PDFA) and other dairy farmers.
“These committees will undertake extensive checking to stop milk adulteration. The committees will also sensitize the sweet shop owners to avoid use of adulterated milk in the preparation of sweets coupled with a warning that defaulters would invite stern action,” he said.
Simultaneously, the consumers would be made aware of checking the milk adulteration and would be empowered to get the milk checked from the local ‘milk check locations’, he said.
He said that various milk check points would be established, equipped with latest milk testing machines manned by trained personnel. The entire process would be supervised by Food Safety Officers and other trained doctors, under the Food Safety Act, he said.
Pannu informed that two more laboratories for determining the quality of collected samples would be roped in and declared as State Testing labs and multiple samples would be taken at a time and sent simultaneously to different labs in order to get correct reports and eliminate the possibility of misreporting.
He said that adulteration in milk and milk products is not only harmful from health aspect but is also detrimental to dairy farmers who fail to sell quality milk owing to its higher cost.
Reiterating the same sentiment, PDFA president Daljit Singh Sadarpura said that the cost of production of quality milk is about Rs 30 per litre but due to the adulteration, inferior quality milk is easily available in the market from Rs 23 to 26 per litre.
Due to widespread malpractice, genuine dairy farmers who chose the dairy business over the traditional farming are facing huge losses. Offering full support to the Government, dairy farmers requested to tighten the noose around the
CITIZENS BE TRAINED TO KNOW NUTRITIOUS VAlUE, AND ADUlTERATION
Punjab Health and Family Welfare Minister Brahm Mohindra on Wednesday said that the citizen of Punjab would now be trained to know the nutritious values of food items by conducting simple tests at home, besides the adulteration in food items.
“A comprehensive plan to train the citizen of state under Tandarust Punjab Mission has been chalked out by the Department. All this will be done on each Friday which would be celebrated as ‘Food Awareness Day’,” he said.
He said that the public would be given tips on selecting and purchase of quality food items. “The do's and don'ts of buying package canned and bottled foods, condiments and spices, milk and milk products, egg, poultry and fish, the fruits and vegetables etc as they will be cautioned against misleading advertisements of food products,” he said.
The public will also be given tips on storage of raw food, fruits and vegetables and tips for microwave cooking. “Common checks to detect food adulteration at home, without any sophisticated equipment will be another important aspect. Methods to check adulteration of milk, oil, grains would be taught like detection of mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes and others starches in ghee, detection of sugar solution in honey and other common adulterants in food products,” he said.
Mohindra said that more than 1,000 awareness camps have already been organized across the state. “Now people are keen to learn the ways and means using which they can know about the nutritious as well as adulterated food to protect themselves from chronic and other diseases,” he added.
To impart basic facts and understanding about adulterated and unhealthy food, awareness camps are being organized under the supervision of Food Safety Officers posted in each district, supported by their staff and local NGOs.
“In the awareness camps, the Food Business Operators (FBOs) from rehriwalas to hoteliers including the kariana or general merchants, fruit traders, milk suppliers and the general public are being imparted training to know the importance of food safety to lead secure and healthy life style,” he said.
In the second phase, we have planned to organize special camps about Food Safety Act in the schools, colleges and other educational institutes of the State, he added.
The Minister said that soon two more Food Safety Mobile Vans would be launched with more advanced and latest technology to check the adulterated food.