As in the whole country, specially in north India, in Haridwar region too adulteration in food items is posing a serious threat to public health. The menace of food adulteration assumes alarming proportions during Char Dham Yatra season, when lacs of pilgrims and tourists congregate at Haridwar and Rishikesh and other destinations on the yatra route. On the petition of five persons, including three from Haridwar, Bhooma Peethadheeshwar Achutyanand Teerthji Maharaj, the president of Haridwar senior citizens welfare society, Shiv Kumar Gupta and a senior citizen, Upendra Dutt Sharma, requesting the Supreme Court to issue directions to the central government and the governments of Delhi, Rajasthan, U.P., Haryana and Uttarakhand to initiate stringent measures to curb the menace of adulteration in milk and manufacturing of synthetic milk, the Apex Court, expressing grave concern about the issue, issued notices to the central government and the governments of the five states to file reply within four weeks.
Adulteration in food items has become a flourishing trade in the country. The unscruplous traders and businessman are fleecing the consumers and playing havoc with their health, while the administration looks the other way. There is hardly any item which is available in the market in pure and unadulterated form. Almost everything you purchase from the market is adulterated. Pulses are adulterated, seeds of papaya are mixed in black pepper, the droppings of horses are mixed in coriander powder and powder of bricks in turmeric powder. Bananas are made to ripen by dropping them in drums of chemicals. Fruits are dipped in artificial colours to give them attractive appearance. Injections are administered to vegetables and fruits to swell their size and make them ripen fast. “Fruits and vegetables are not only losing their nutritional value but also their original flavour,” says Rajkumar of Jwalapur.
Milk and milk products top the list of unsafe food items. Says Suman Aggarwal of Devpura Chowk, Haridwar, “It is impossible to get pure milk these days. It is no exaggeration to say that what we are drinking is white poison”. The main reason behind adulteration in milk and milk products, like paneer, curd, sweets, ghee and mawa, is the yawning gap between the demand and supply. The production of milk goes down in summer season due to less quantity of lactation by the cows and the buffalos in summer days. On the contrary, the demand goes up drastically at this time due to heavy influx of pilgrims and tourists. There may be shortage of drinking water, but there is no shortage of milk. Where does the extra milk come from ? The proprietors of dairies, the milk vendors and the shop keepers try to meet the spiralling demand by adulterating milk with water, taken mostly from canals and ponds, which is harmful for health. Harmful chemicals are mixed to enhance the density of milk. What is still more alarming is that synthetic milk is being prepared on a large scale by mixing water with skimmed milk powder, vegetable oils, detergents, paints, urea and caustic soda. Rackets of synthetic milk have been busted in the past, but no severe punishment has yet been meted out to any of the accused. Roorkee area, from where synthetic milk is supplied not only to the district but also to the hills in the state, has become notorious for this malpractice. Dr. Rajesh Gupta, the president of the city unit of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), says that the contents which are used in adulterated and synthetic milk are extremely harmful for liver, kidney and other vital organs of the body. A popular nefarious practice is to administer the injection of oxytocin to make cows and buffalos to give more milk. “This is not only a cruelty to animals, but the milk procured in this way is also injurious to health”, says the state unit president of the World Wide Fund of Nature (WWF), Rajendra Agarwal. Manohar Lal Sharma, a senior advocate of Roorkee alleges that the flourishing trade of synthetic milk and milk adulteration goes on openly with the connivance of the officials of the food department.
R.S. Rawat, the Designated Officer (DO) in the district under the Food Safety and Standards Act, says that public co-operation is essential to enforce the laws. The Food Safety and Standards (FSS) Act of India 2006 came into force in all the states from August 2011. The act has made strong provisions, including life imprisonment, to check the sale of unsafe food. The sources in the food department say that since January this year 48 samples of milk and other food items have been taken and sent to Rudrapur Laboratory for test. Out of these samples 17 have failed. Now cases are being registered in the court of the chief judicial magistrate and the A.D.M. (finance), depending on the category of the offence”, say the sources in the food department. The district magistrate, Sachin Kurwe, who has recently assumed charge, says that enforcing effective check putting on adulteration in food items, specially milk, is his top priority. A prominent saint, Swami Achutyanand Teerthji Maharaj says that besides the alertness of the law enforcing agencies, the public should also be made aware of their rights so that administration is pressurized to tighten noose on the perpetrators of the most heinous crime of food adulteration.
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