Adulterators cook up a health hazard

October 15, 2007

New Delhi: Horse dung in dhania powder, petroleum products in khoya and a liberal dose of artificial colour to make your salad look more attractive — the festive season is boom time for perpetrators of food adulteration offences. And they can rest easy, because with the present pace of inspections by the health department, they are in no danger of being caught, while Delhiites pay the price of their laxity.

Not one of the 27 SDMs in the city have collected the mandatory 20-24 food samples per month from their respective areas in the last 10 months. In fact the highest is 154 which is just a little more than 50% of the minimum number that was decided in a departmental meeting held on October 25, 2006. What's more, the sole food adulteration checking laboratory at the government's disposal does not have the facility for refrigeration of samples, which means that most of the samples go waste. Hardly surprising then than the department's district-wise statistics show minimal adulteration in the small number of samples tested. ''Most are disposed off without testing,'' admitted an official. Inspection teams are supposed to take samples at random and test them. The worst offenders in the matter of not taking the mandatory number of samples are Seemapuri (where 23 samples were tested over 10 months instead of 200-240), Parliament Street (42), Gandhi Nagar (50), Narela (51) and Kalkaji (58). Health minister Yoganand Shastri recently held a meeting of SDMs and food inspectors where all districts were pulled up for their dis

mal show. They have now been given an ultimatum. Pull up your socks or face departmental action. Explained an official: ''Inspections are carried out by three-member teams, the SDM, the inspector and a field assistant, but it is largely the SDM who is held responsible. And the three districts which have shown zero adulteration will be under greater scrutiny because as per the rules, an SDM who has submitted a report with such a claim and is later proved false during raids by cross-checking agencies like NGOs, face strict action.'' The three districts which have submitted zero adulteration figures are Daryagunj, Parliament Street and Seemapuri. The tighter norms for districts with ''zero figures'' are to ensure that officials, eager to have a ''clean record'' do not take the samples only from places which are known to be honest, the official explained. abantika

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