Agra: In a major crackdown, as much as 19,000 litre of synthetic milk was destroyed by the Food Safety and Drug Administration department (FSDA) here. The synthetic milk was bought in the city for making sweets for the festive season.
An FSDA team intercepted a tanker with synthetic milk with a market value of over Rs 1 lakh at the time of checking near Saiyan toll plaza.
Talking with TOI, Shweta Saini, designated officer, FSDA, said, “We are regularly sending our teams to inspect food items to ensure pure and safe supply of consumable items in the city during the festival season. We have lodged a complaint against the owner of this synthetic milk and sent a sample to a laboratory for testing. Action will be taken against the owner in accordance with the sample report.”
Another FSDA team has been deployed to collect sample of sweets from mithai shops in Tajganj.
According to FSDA sources, there is not much difference between “real” milk and its synthetic variant, except that the former nourishes and the other kills. They taste and look so similar that one fails to detect the difference.
Synthetic milk is prepared with vegetable refined oil, mixed with emulsifier and then poured slowly into a wide-mouthed container. The two are mixed to acquire the form of a thick white paste and with the addition of water, the paste gets the density similar to that of milk. Sodium sulphate, glucose, maltose, detergent are then dissolved in hot water.
Recent raids elsewhere in UP have revealed use of different chemicals like titanium oxide to manufacture synthetic milk.
Experts in the field said the ingredients that go in the making of synthetic milk are calculated to match fat and SNF (solids not fat). This way it passes the tests. This kind of sophistication involves scientific knowhow. Chemicals are evolving every four to five years. Such rapid changes mean that these artificial products fail the fairly elementary tests conducted in the smaller centres. Newer chemicals that have the ability to defy researches and tests conducted at village level dairy cooperative societies are added to the synthetic milk.
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