Adulteration provides food for thought in House

Hyderabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday demanded that the government form a House committee to suggest and recommend solutions to the problem of food adulteration in the State. The issue of adulteration came up for discussion during the Question Hour on Monday when Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) member V Srinivas Rao sought to know about the steps being taken by the government to curb food adulteration.

The Health Minister said the government had sanctioned 30 posts of Food Safety Officers and 10 posts of designated officers in the State for implementation of FSS Act. In addition, task force, along with the Police and Food Department officials, was checking food adulteration in the State by constituting 14 special teams. The Minister said there was one Food Testing Laboratory in the State located at Nacharam in Hyderabad. The State food laboratory had been serving for both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and its capacity to analyse food sample was about 12,600 samples per annum, he added. Cases had been filed before the first class magistrate court adjudicating officer in a set of samples found not maintaining the quality parameters.

As the Minister replied, MIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi said this was an important issue and it needed to be discussed at length. He wanted the Speaker to instruct the Minister to call for a meeting.

He said there should be 60 to 80 persons to check food outlets in each circle within the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), but there were only three officials. “How can they go and inspect all the food outlets?” he asked. He said every other commodity was being adulterated right from the milk which small children consumed and the ginger-garlic paste to oil and ghee. He said that adulteration business had become a Rs10,000 crore worth industry, and there was a need to put an end to the practice for the safety of people.

BJP member G Kishan Reddy wanted the government to form a House committee so that the members could suggest guidelines and steps to curb the adulteration. He said there were about 50 illegal slaughterhouses running in the city and all under the nose of the government. The speaker said the issue would be taken in the form of a discussion.