He grasps two test tubes in his hand, each with a yellow powder at its base, and asks us to look carefully, as he pipettes a few ml of hydrochloric acid in each tube. The first tube turns a murky yellow, the other settles into a uniform band of bright magenta."The adulterated turmeric turns magenta," says Srinivas, a food analyst at the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI)'s Combined Food and Drugs lab, situated in a crowded industrial area in Delhi.
In fact, the lab's main counter looks more like a domestic kitchen shelf with lentils, rice, turmeric, paneer lined up since the common instances of adulteration are in these categories. The only items that hint at the recent Maggi uproar are the bundles of various noodle brands like YiPPee, Top Ramen that peep out of torn brown paper envelopes that had been previously sealed with the ubiquitous sarkari red sealing wax. Some of these noodles are already cooking in conical flasks, waiting to pass the FSSAI check.
Not all samples are easy to crack for false food colours, chemicals and additives. But the laboratory that covers the entire Delhi region with a population of over 18 million with just three food analysts and a minimal budget of Rs 40 lakh for the year (2014-15), plods away. It even had to outsource the Maggi tests to a private certified lab, though they were conducted under an FSSAI analyst's supervision because despite having the required equipment there is a shortage of skilled technical manpower at the government lab.
S M Bhardwaj, chief food analyst, says only around four to five case samples can be checked per day. "We check if the labelling, physical and chemical composition of the product in question meets the standards. A report is sent in 14 days," says Bhardwaj, tapping the laboratory's bible, Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, Food Safety and Standards Rules, 2011. "We follow the book. Our analysts are all biochemistry postgraduates who have to pass a food analyst exam after a three-year stint as lab chemists." The lab findings are then sent to Mysore's Central Food Technological Research Institute, which gets samples from across the country.
"There is a lot of adulteration in food, especially with food colours, and we have to be careful," says Bhardwaj. To emphasize his point, he leads us to two petri dishes holding edible silver foil. As both samples shimmer innocuously under the lab's low-hanging tubelights, Bhardwaj asks us to look closely as he adds drops of ammonium nitrate to both dishes. One foil dissolves into oblivion in less than a second, but the harmful 'aluminium' varq defiantly remains. "This fake foil was picked up after a complaint. The person was being served aluminium as food. Festival time is our busiest, since we check for adulterated mithais and khoya," says Bhardwaj, who has been testing food for the last 22 years.
K K Jindal, food safety commissioner for Delhi, says four samples of each product are taken. Three are sent to lab and one is kept aside with the district head. If the matter comes up in court, we produce the unopened sample," says. "We do look at imported food products to see if the content and the labels match. We usually don't check companies who have a FSSAI certification, but we do take up specific consumer complaints," he says.
Bhardwaj cites a complaint from a woman who was served a stale chicken sandwich at a famous coffee chain outlet. The chicken was visibly mouldy. The lab had it tested, and their findings helped her file a consumer complaint. "These cases come in often. There are two types of complaints: unsafe food cases that can be addressed in a criminal court and misbranded or labelling cases, which are taken to the additional district magistrate courts," he says.
"Packaged products are mostly safe. It is the shops that sell loose products, that adulterate the food," says V D Joshi, another analyst who shows us a beaker with milky-white paneer bits. He adds water and warms the paneer-water solution and adds a ml of iodine, the beatific white creamy paneer is now a sinister blue mass. "There is added starch or rice powder in the paneer; this is how people are cheated,"says Joshi.
Maggi row or no, food today is relatively safer, feel the analysts. According to them, the '90s were the worst decade for the processed food industry in India. "There was rampant use of food colour with 200 ppm allowed. Today it is down to less than 100 ppm. It is far more regulated now," says Bhardwaj.
Besides contamination, fakes are also a problem."The police gave us a case of a vendor selling ghee packaged under a popular brand name. He had infringed on the copyright, and the ghee comprised of hydrogenated vegetable oil and chemicals. His shop was shut down, but soon he started selling the same adulterated ghee using another brand's logo, operating from another part of Delhi. There is no stopping someone who is into the food adulteration business," says Bhardwaj, who says that he doesn't let his family have cola drinks or highly coloured foods. His advice: "Always wash your vegetables in vinegar water, and don't go for shiny or brightly coloured lentils."
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