Test results on food products from China "satisfactory": AVA

SINGAPORE: The Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) said test results on food products from China, including fresh vegetables, have so far been "satisfactory".

This comes as China is investigating claims into reports that vegetable sellers are spraying cabbage with formaldehyde to keep it fresh.

Formaldehyde is commonly used as a preservative for laboratory specimens and embalming.

It is also a cancer-causing substance, and can be fatal, if ingested.

Media and Internet reports this week said the practice has been used by dozens of vegetable sellers in the eastern province of Shandong.

AVA said food products, including fresh vegetables from China are regularly tested to ensure they comply with Singapore's food safety standards.

Produce are tested for preservatives like formaldehyde, pesticide residues and even heavy metals.

AVA said 29 per cent of Singapore's fresh vegetable supply is from China. AVA also added that consumers are encouraged to wash their fresh vegetables thoroughly before cooking and eating.

Separately, NTUC FairPrice said about 30 to 35 per cent of its vegetables come from China, but these are not from the affected region.

FairPrice said it's a primary food safety partner of AVA, and works closely with the authorities to provide customers with safe and quality food.

Milk adulteration - Maneka Gandhi

India calls itself the largest producer and consumer of milk in the world. 83 % people drink it. The poor often forgo proper food – vegetable and cereals – to buy milk for their children. Even in a middle class family, they would rather do without fruit than milk. Is India the largest producer of milk? No. We are simply the largest drinkers. Most of the milk we drink is not milk. I have been saying this for twenty years and in that time, more and more Not Milk has found its way into your body. Every few years, the government does a survey and finds that milk has been adulterated hugely with poisons: fertilizer, urea, bleach, detergent to name a few additions.

This is not 90% milk and some additions. This is 20% milk and 80% chemicals. In March this year, The National Survey on Milk Adulteration was conducted by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India to identify the common adulterants in milk in rural and urban areas and to find out how prevalent contamination was. 1791 samples were collected randomly and analysed from 33 states. The samples were sent to the government laboratories for analysis. The parameters analysed were Fat (%), SNF (%), Neutralizers, Acidity, Hydrogen Peroxide, Sugar, Starch, Glucose, Urea, Salt, Detergent, Skimmed milk powder, and Vegetable fat .

1226 adulterated samples or the astonishing sum of 68.4%. 31% of rural samples were adulterated . Of these 16.7% were packet – or branded milk which most people think is pure and the rest were loose samples from dairies. In the urban areas 68.9% were adulterated of which 33.4% was packaged/branded milk and 66.6% were loose samples. The deviations were found highest on account of Fat and SNF (Solid Not Fat which includes milk powder or artificial milk powder replacers) these were found in 46.8% of the samples. The most common adulteration was the added cheap oil, the second highest was the Milk Powder in 548 samples (44.69%) and glucose in 477 samples.

147 of these also had detergent and 2 had neutralizers (urea) as well. Apart from that detergent was found in 103 samples (8.4%). This may be because when milk is diluted with water, clean water is never used: it has to be used washing water or gutter water because the weight of that will be greater. You need to see which states you should NOT drink milk in: These were the states in which 100% of the milk was found adulterated: Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Daman and Diu, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Mizoram.

The others were not much better: Manipur (96%), Meghalaya (96%), Tripura (92%), Gujarat (89%) (This is the home of milk production) , Sikkim (89%), Uttarakhand (88%), Uttar Pradesh (88%), Nagaland (86%), Jammu & Kashmir (83%), Punjab (81%), Rajasthan (76%) Delhi (70%), Haryana (70%), Arunachal Pradesh (68%), Maharashtra (65%), Himachal Pradesh (59%), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (58%), Assam (55%), Chandigarh (48%), Madhya Pradesh (48%), Kerala (28%), Karnataka (22%), Tamil Nadu (12%), and Andhra Pradesh (6.7%). Only Goa and Puducherry came out clean. The study came to the conclusion that the addition of dirty water to milk was a common and dangerous adulterant. The presence of detergents and other chemical contaminants fertilizer, bleach and detergent, hydrogen peroxide, and urea showed lack of hygiene in the handling, shortcomings in the testing processes of the branded milk companies, perhaps deliberate, and posed definite dangers to consumers.

The most important conclusion it came to was that powdered milk was being mixed with water and passed off as milk only because of the extreme shortfall in actual milk . Perk up. Things are not going to get any better. No reports by the government or token raids of dairies will solve the problem of adulteration. There are simply no cows and buffaloes left. The myth that we have millions of milk producing animals is simply that – a myth that should be exposed like the statistics on the tiger that the government kept giving out till independent surveys showed that there are less than a 1000 tigers due to poaching. Likewise, your cattle are being killed in the millions for beef and leather. Pregnant cows and buffaloes are found in the thousands every night in slaughterhouses and overloaded trucks.

One crore cows and buffaloes cross the border annually to Bangladesh. Two crore cows and buffaloes are killed in small slaughterhouses in places like Moradabad, Rampur, Hyderabad, Aligarh. The Allanas, Punjab Meats and Al Kabirs of India kill another 1 crore of young calves and cows illegally. The government slaughterhouses of Deonar and Gazipur in Mumbai/Delhi kill another crore annually. We are killing 50 million cattle every year for leather and meat export. There is such a demand that newly born calves, young females , cows that have only given milk for two years , pregnant mothers , all the males are all sent off. Go to the villages. You will see a Cattle Market , originally meant for farmers , now for the exclusive demand of butchers. It is illegal for any market to sell more than two cows or buffaloes to one person or to have trucks or any vehicles standing nearby. Now, trucks encircle every market and the buyers buy 50 at a time – not for their milk output but by the weight.The cow takes as long as a woman to give birth 285 days( a woman takes about 260 days ). She gives birth to a single baby. Even if she is made pregnant immediately after, she can only give birth 285 days later.

In the meantime she is both feeding the baby in her womb and being milked for you. She develops a disease called keratosis and that you get in the real milk - along with the other wonderful additions.Therefore , as long as we continue killing in this frenzied manner and boasting that our leather export is 27,000 crore rupees or more. And as long as we sent our cattle to Kerala, West Bengal and Bangladesh and the foreign owned companies that have entered India to feed the entire world with our beef, we will never have milk. 70% to 100% of the milk you drink is dangerously contaminated because there is no milk.And since none of you are realize that REAL milk, even if it existed in this country, is still deadly for your body, you will continue demanding it and the artificial milk industry will grow and continue to laugh. People always think that they will never get cancer. But one in four has it. In the same way you think you must be the only one that is drinking pure milk. But if you are in a state with 100% adulteration, you don't have a chance. And Delhi with 70% adulteration doesn't leave you with much chance either.

Tomorrow morning you and your children will be drinking something that may have a little milk in it but whose volume and profit has been increased with water, pulverized detergent or soap, sodium hydroxide, vegetable oil, salt and urea. It does not require genius to adulterate milk and disguise it . It can be done simply and rapidly. The rot started in Rajasthan, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh where most of the cattle have been slaughtered.Now it is all over. Bihar is sending thousands and thousands of cattle to West Bengal every night. No wonder they have to adulterate the milk.

To join the animal welfare movement contact gandhim@nic.in

NEW CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, FSSAI