Srinagar: After a prolonged public outcry and recent revelations regarding three companies allegedly involved in the adulteration of food products, a division bench of Jammu and Kashmir led by Justice Muzaffar Hussain Attar and Tashi Rabistan has asked three business house, two Kashmir based and one Delhi based, to deposit Rs 10 crore each with the director of Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Science for selling adulterated food products in the state.
The court order followed a report by the Central Food Laboratory (CFL), Kolkata, which said the products are “misbranded, substandard and unsafe". “In our considered view, at this stage we deem it appropriate to direct the owners or managing directors of the above said companies or corporations to deposit the amount of Rs. 10 crores each with the Director SKIMS within two weeks,” the division bench said after clubbing the matter with a public interest litigation filed by Sheikh Ayub on the implementation of the Food Safety Act, 2006.
The Omar Abdullah government has finally decided to step in. Agencies. The Omar Abdullah government has finally decided to step in. Agencies. The directive comes as a major embarrassment to Kashmir's fledgling corporate sector as they had recently denied using any hazardous agents in their products and threatened to move court against the state officials. They had alleged that the government officials were maligning the image of their products.
The three corporate houses including two big Kashmir-based brands, Kanwal Agro Food Industries and Khyber Agro farms, had denied any adulteration of their food products. A Delhi-based manufacturing group Avon Agro whose turmeric powder was also found to be adulterated has also been asked to deposit the amount before the prosecution in the cases is started. Director Marketing and Sales Kanwal Agro Food Industries Farooq Amin had recently termed the reports of adulteration as a conspiracy to malign the name of the company. “Some vested interests in the administration are hell-bent to malign our image. That is why they have sent samples to Kolkata even though those samples were cleared by Public Analyst Kashmir Province,” he said.
Food adulteration is not a new phenomenon in the Valley. In fact doctors say the occurrence has recently seen a phenomenal rise, which has led to a rise in patients with gastric problems in Kashmir. But the Government of Jammu and Kashmir has time and again failed to check the standards of food products in the Valley. “Adulterated food is the basic reason behind the rise of cancers in Kashmir valley.
These people should be put behind bars, and their manufacturing units closed down. China hanged a man three years back for doing the same thing,” Kashmir -based gastroenterologist Dr M S Khuroo told Firstpost. “It is unacceptable.” People in Kashmir were shocked on December 16, when the Srinagar Municipal Corporation asked people to refrain from using ‘Kanwal Saunf’ powder which was found to contain harmful colouring agents which can even cause cancer.
The spice brand is manufactured by Kanwal Agro Food Industries based in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district. Similarly two days after the warning, the Food and Drug Department found traces of detergent in milk products of the Valley's top brand Khyber. The milk produced by the company is distributed throughout the valley.
Dr Shafqat Khan, an official at the Srinagar Municipal Corporation, said they had randomly picked up a sample of Kanwal Saunf powder manufactured by the Kanwal Agro Food Industries and send the product for analysis at Central Food laboratory Kolkata. “It turned out that the powder contained colouring agents like Carmoisine and Tartrazine which can cause serious health hazards including cancer,” Khan said.
The western world had banned the use of Carmoisine and Tartrazine in food products after scientific studies showed that these chemicals were responsible for the rise in the number of cancer cases. In its first ever country-wide survey on milk adulteration conducted in year 2011, the Food Safety Standards Authority of India found that of the total 1,791 samples tested throughout the country, including Jammu and Kashmir, at least over 68 per cent i.e. 1,226 samples were either diluted with water or mixed with harmful detergents. It also said that 83 percent of milk produced and consumed In Jammu and Kashmir is contaminated. Despite a government agency confirming the adulteration at such a massive scale, surprisingly, the topic met with a tepid response from state government.
Experts had warned that the consumption of contaminated milk across the state could lead to multiple gastroenteritis problems, food poisoning, endocrinology and several other chronic diseases. “Hazardous substances like detergent, starch, soda, glucose and other synthetic substances were being mixed with milk which becomes harmful for human consumption,” the report had said. But finally the state government seems to have woken from the deep slumber.
Authorities have now initiated legal proceedings for violation of Food Safety and Standard Act and the government is likely to give a nod for prosecuting Kanwal Agro Farms and Khyber Industries. “Under the Food Safety and Standard Act, if the two companies are proven guilty of indulging in malpractices in manufacturing process, the law demands that they should either be fined or their licenses should be cancelled,” Kashmir’s advocate general, Mohammad Isaac Qadri said. Kanwal Agro Food Industries is the leading spice manufacturer in Kashmir with an annual turnover of Rs 100 crore which supplies spices to nearly 30 countries across the globe while Khyber Agro Farms is part of the Trumboo family’s multi-billion business empire in Kashmir whose present CEO Umar Trumboo has various business interests from agro to healthcare and hotel industry.
Last week the State Human Rights Commission took notice of the case and asked the owner of Khyber to appear before the commission in person for what it termed as a ‘case of genocide’.
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