Chemicals, poor quality material in Chardham prasad, says NGO

The NGO sampled 1,143 food items in the May-June period, and found 983 samples adulterated.

Pilgrims will be in for a shock to learn that the ‘prasad’ offered by them at the Chardham shrines did not only have chemicals but was also made of poor quality ingredients.

Society of Pollution & Environmental Conservation Scientists (SPECS) , a non-government organisation, has found after a study that cardamom offered to deities in all the four shrines of Gangotri, Yamunotri, Badrinath and Kedarnath, contained chemicals. In addition, the NGO claimed, ghee, coconut, cashew and raisins were of poor quality.

The NGO sampled 1,143 food items in the May-June period, and found 983 samples adulterated. What’s worse salt used for preparing food didn’t contain iodine, said an NGO official.

The findings found an overall adulteration of 86% of the total samples collected for tests. Eighty-one percent of salt samples did not have iodine. Mustard oil and vermillion were found adulterated. Some common items used to cook noodles such as chilli sauce, tomato sauce and vinegar were found unfit for consumption.

“Not only food, even prasad offered to the deities is of poor quality. Consumption of the food served to the people on yatra could mean a serious threat to life. Salt, an important ingredient was, found without iodine...which is dangerous,” SPECS secretary Brijmohan Sharma said at a conference after releasing the findings on Wednesday.

In the first 10 days, 2.21 lakh pilgrims paid obeisance at Badrinath and Kedarnath. Some 15 lakh pilgrims visited the four shrines within two months after the pilgrimage season began on April 27.

Food Safety and Standards Authority (FSSA) additional commissioner Pankaj Pandey rejected the findings of the NGO. “If the findings are genuine, then why don’t they share statistics with the government? We don’t claim that there is no adulteration along the route, but the report is exaggerated,” he told Hindustan Times.

Secretary, tourism, R Meenakshi Sundaram came out in support of Pandey. “I can’t say whether the report is correct or not, but it brings a bad name to the state. If the NGO is so concerned of adulteration, then why doesn’t it reach out to the authority?”

Sharma was clueless whether the report was to be shared with FSSA officials. He told Hindustan Times that the previous reports were submitted to former chief minister Harish Rawat, who forwarded the findings to the department concerned. “It’s difficult to meet secretaries and, therefore, we forward our reports to the chief minister.

DINAKARAN NEWS

DINAKARAN NEWS

Food safety officer sends dal instead of rice for testing

Chennai

Absent For 7 Months, Drew Full Salary

A food safety officer in Tiruvallur has been found responsible for his office sending a sample of dal instead of rice for testing to the government laboratory concerned. Besides, S Muthukumar did not report to work for a single day for seven months, but drew full salary for the period.

The incident came to light while an RTI activist was inspecting records in the office in connection with a food safety complaint he filed in July 2016.

M Kasimayan, a motor mechanic from Thiruvottiyur, lodged a complaint with the Tamil Nadu Food Safety and Drug Control Administration department about poor quality rice being sold at a grocery in the neighbourhood.

The complaint was forwarded to the designated food safety officer in Tiruvallur district, but appropriate action was taken. Grieved, Kasimayan filed a Right to Information (RTI) petition with the food safety department a few months later. He received a five kg of irrelevant documents after he went for a second appeal with the state information commission. He had sought details only about follow-ups to his complaint filed in July 2016, but the department sent details of all complaints it received since July 2016 Kasimayan then sought permission under section 2 (j) of the RTI Act 2005 to scrutinise records pertaining to the case. Scrutinising the records he got this month, he found the officers concerned sent tur dal instead of rice for testing to the government food analysis laboratory , Salem.

The dal sample was also declared `misbranded' by the lab, the results for which were not revealed to Kasimayan.Misbranding of food attracts up to `3 lakh in fine under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.

A senior state food safety wing official said they collected all possible samples, including rice, from the Thiruvottiyur grocery and reports on other samples were awaited.

Further, the attendance register of the said office showed Muthukumar, the designated officer, hadn't reported to work in seven months.

“It is not mandatory for the designated officer, head of the department, to sign the register everyday as might be busy conducting field inspections. However, efforts would be made to cross-check the register,“ the official said.

Referring to government order 99 which says grievance petitions should be redressed within a month, Kasimayan said that contrarily it had taken almost a year for the department to check whether the official concerned was reporting to his office regularly or not.