Here’s how you test milk and milk products at home

MEERUT: To ease the burden on government officials and enable households to check the purity of milk and milk products, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has issued a chart that can be used to check the quality of these. Easily available chemicals can be used to assess the safety of the milk consumed, right at home. 

"Various bakeries and milk products sellers indulge in adulteration. These manufacturers often do not come under the scanner of the food department. That is why the FSSAI has issued this chart, so people can easily learn how to check the quality of the milk or milk products," said JP Singh, chief food safety officer. 

"Ordinary citizens can use the manual to check adulteration in milk and milk products. Government labs are already under pressure with so many samples, it is often difficult to deal with the large number of samples received in a timely manner. With this manual, people can conduct checks on milk on their own," read the order from Praveen Kumar Singh, commissioner, Food Safety and Drug Administration. 

This comes days after the state's food testing laboratories were thrown open to ordinary citizens. Someone who suspects adulteration in a food item is free to bring it for testing to the state lab, on payment of Rs 1,000 to test each sample. 

The manual issued by FSSAI can be used to test the presence of starch, water, urea, vanaspati, formalin and detergent in milk. The presence of vanaspati or starch in sweet curd, and sweets like rabdi or in khoa, paneer, chhana can also be tested at home using the chart. 

There are six food testing laboratories in Uttar Pradesh, at Lucknow, Varanasi, Meerut, Agra, Gorakhpur and Jhansi. Now, routine and easy checks can be conducted at home, using common chemicals. 

"We will publish pamphlets of the manual for distribution outside schools and at meetings of district officials, so people are more aware of how these tests can be conducted," JP Singh said.