Failure attributed to lack of sophisticated equipment, definition of toddy
A toddy tapper at work in a coconut farm at Gopalapuram, Palakkad. Farms
in the area account for the bulk of toddy yield in Kerala.
Kerala’s iconic alcoholic drink toddy has emerged
‘clean’ from a series of quality tests by Food Safety and Standards
Authority (FSSA). The test results have surprised food safety officials
and scientists familiar with the culture and business of toddy in the
State.
The laboratory tests, the first under the FSSA
regime, were carried out at regional labs in Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi
and Kozhikode. The results showed nothing wrong with the 12 toddy
samples.
But a senior FSSA official was surprised at
the results and conceded there were no parameters in place to judge the
quality of toddy or to determine whether a particular sample was
synthetic or natural.
Lack of sophisticated equipment
at the regional laboratories is one reason for the failure of the tests
to reveal what people suspected for long — rampant adulteration of
toddy. A committee appointed by the government early this year to look
into problems facing toddy business admitted there was adulteration of
toddy. The High Court of Kerala has been scathing in its attack on sale
of spurious toddy.
“The more serious problem in
detecting spurious toddy is that there is no definition of toddy
available,” said the FSSA official. If the quality of toddy has to be
determined, it has to be defined and its chemical composition and
properties identified.
But there is no definition of
toddy except for the specification on its ethyl alcohol content solely
for the purpose of abkari business, which is controlled by Kerala Abkari
Shops (Disposal) Rules, 2002.
Rule 9(2) says that
ethyl alcohol content in toddy solution on sale should not exceed 8.1
per cent volume by volume in the case of the produce from coconut trees;
5.2 per cent in the case of palmyrah toddy and 5.9 per cent in toddy
from ‘choondapana’.
Going by this definition, it was a
useless exercise to determine whether a particular sample was either
natural or synthetic, said a senior official of the Excise Department.
The
official said possibilities remained wide open for adulteration of
toddy, the bulk of which originates in farms in the Chittoor taluk in
Palakkad.
According to Excise Department figures,
about 60 per cent of the coconut trees licensed for toddy tapping are in
Palakkad. The official said there are three varieties of toddy
available in Palakkad. The first was the toddy tapped by traditional
tappers from parts of Kerala, especially from Alappuzha. There is little
scope for adulteration of toddy in these farms because of the presence
of tappers who are union members.
The other two
varieties of toddy, tapped mostly by tappers from Tamil Nadu engaged as
contract labourers, offered a lot of scope for adulteration, the
official said. The view was echoed in the report of the committee
appointed by the government early this year to address issues facing
toddy business. The panel, headed by excise commissioner Anil Xavier
said greedy licensees and a toddy deficit had led to rampant
adulteration.
Toddy to be profiled
The
scene could better in the near future. Though long in the making, a
committee of chemists and excise officials are expected to come out with
a proper definition of toddy, which will act as a ready reference
against which testing of toddy can be done in the future.
The
Excise Department claims Kerala produces around 8.35 lakh litres of
toddy a day and consumes 7.21 lakh litres. But there is a general
allegation that Kerala drinks more toddy than it produces. By a rough
estimate, the State consumes about two lakh more litres of toddy than it
actually produces, making spurious toddy sales worth more than Rs. one
crore a day at the price of Rs. 60 a litre.
A
Division Bench of the High Court of Kerala asked the State government to
take a bold decision and ban the sale of toddy in the state. The High
Court asked in September 2012 why toddy business continued in a State
which hardly produced it.
Sale of toddy only helped defeat the prohibition of arrack introduced in the State 16 years ago, the Division Bench had said.
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