DEHRADUN: The food safety department registered cases against 17 shops and restaurant owners in Dehradun for keeping substandard quality food products. Cases have been lodged in the Additional District Magistrate court in Dehradun against the 17 outlets samples from where had been collected in the last three months.
Recently, oil sample collected from a major supermarket in Rajpur Road was tagged as substandard as it didn’t meet the required iodine percentage as mentioned in the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) guidelines.
Ganesh Kandwal, designated food safety officer in Dehradun, said, “Majority of samples that failed the guidelines were from smalltime shopkeepers, who generally do not maintain the cleanliness norm.” He added that the focus will remain on milk samples.
Said to be a significant drive of the department, collection and testing of samples are being affected due to the shoddy infrastructure. Unavailability of electricity, lack of staff at the Rudrapur-based food safety laboratory is causing a major hindrance to the drive.
A officer of the department said, “Even though we try to conduct raids and collect samples as per the set norms, the samples go stale after being kept in the laboratory for days together.”
Though the department has been provided with a special machine from Delhi for checking milk samples, there is still a need for a controlled environment and special arrangements for conducting the tests. Also, just one machine is not sufficient for the entire state.
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