Kolkata: Bread in Kolkata has passed the fitness test, with laboratories examining samples from different bakeries across the city declaring that there was no need to panic. Officials indicated that the " hazardous " chemicals in question were found to be in much less quantity than the permissible limits.
Though the report has not yet been made public, a KMC official said the test reports indicated no harmful substances were found in bread.
The bread scare started on May 23 when a report, citing some test results in Delhi, claimed nearly 84% of 38 commonly available brands of pre-packaged breads tested positive for potassium bromate and potassium iodate, listed as "hazardous" for public health and so, banned in certain countries. The report had pointed out that while one of the chemicals was a Category 2B carcinogen, possibly carcinogenic to humans, the other could cause thyroid disorders. The scare brought down the sales of bread across the country, including the city, drastically, following which civic food safety officers collected samples of flour mass and bread from four bakeries and sent them to a laboratory.
The reports of the test-started a fortnight ago-was despatched to the KMC food safety cell in a sealed envelope on Tuesday afternoon. The report would now be sent to the food safety commissioner of the state at Swastha Bhawan for further probe and recommendation, said a KMC official, though a civic health official said the samples sent to the Centre-approved laboratory had cleared the food safety test. "The samples were proved to have potassium iodate and potassium bromate much below the permissible limits. If high dose of these two chemicals are found in bread, it would have made it unfit for human consumption," a KMC official said.
According to food safety standards, combined presence of iodate and chromate more than 5mg in a 100gm flour mass, used to make a bread, may cause health hazards. But no such chemical should be present in an oven-fresh bread, a food safety official said. In case of samples collected by the KMC food safety cell and tested, the presence of these two chemicals were found to be much lower than the prescribed limit.
Following a dip in sales, bakers' organizations, which requested mayor Sovan Chatterjee to intervene, had claimed of the 10,000 bakeries in the state, only a handful, financially sound units used the two chemicals as taste enhancers. But they were not sure about the flour quality. "We get flour from mills. Most mill owners mix potassium bromate and potassium iodate as taste enhancers. If they mix them beyond the permissible limits, how are we to blame? The testing of quality of flour is important," said a bakery owner, Idris Ali, who heads a bakers' organization.
BOX:
The scare: Bread is unfit for human consumption.
The reason: Presence of potassium iodate and potassium bromate beyond permissible limit.
Origin of scare: Delhi
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