With Rakshabandhan just around the corner, Delhi’s food safety department seized around 1,000 kgs of spurious khoya during a surprise check at the khoya mandi near Kashmere gate early Monday morning.
The officers collected six samples to be tested in the laboratory; the rest was taken to the Gazipur landfill and destroyed.
“Every morning, people carry khoya in the flat bottomed vessel we call parat to sell it at the Mandi. When we reached the market today, there were several vendors sitting with their wares. As soon as they spotted us, they abandoned everything and fled. We could not catch anyone, but we confiscated all the spurious khoya. Only a few regular vendors had genuine products,” said Ranjeet Singh, designated officer, Food Safety Department.
The officers could recognise spurious and unsafe khoya on visual inspection.
“We have years of experience and can tell the real khoya from the fake just by visual examination; the spurious ones were whiter than what khoya actually looks like, most of them also smelled of refined oil, which is usually added when vendors make khoya with milk powder. Milk powder is usually make of skimmed milk with less than 0.5% fat, the khoya made from it is very dry and oil is added to improve the consistency. Real khoya is made by drying out the milk till only the fat and solid not fat is left,” the official said.
Some of the samples also smelled bad, were ridden with flies, and wrapped in dirty gunny bags.
The spurious and unhygienic khoya starts coming into the market during the festive season.
“This month there was Teej and now Rakshabandhan when most families give each other sweets made of khoya. The demand for khoya again goes up during diwali. It is best to avoid sweets made of khoya during the festive season,” said Singh.
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