Chennai: After reining in manufacturers and retailers for the sale of contaminatedand unlabelled packaged drinking water in the city, the food safety department has now set out to nip the distribution link of the chain.
Over the last two days, food safety officials have planted themselves along stretches in Koyambedu, Red Hills, Mount Road, ECR-OMR, Moolakadai and Velachery that see high movement of vehicles ferrying in water in bubble-top cans from neighbouring Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts.
On Wednesday, a four-member team of officials intercepted nine vehicles in Koyambedu and found at least 30 cans that were “soiled and very unhygienic”, and 28 others that carried no labels. While the soiled containers were destroyed immediately, the vehicles carrying containers with no labels were let off with a warning.
On Tuesday morning, officials had stopped around five vehicles on Erukkancheri High Road in Pulianthope after they were found transporting around 350 20-litres cans that were unlabeled. They also found 20 of them were either damaged or not sealed properly. They seized 120 containers and asked the distributors to return to the manufacturers for proper labelling.
Designated food safety officer, Chennai, R Kathiravan said the department had decided to crackdown on the transport of water in unlabeled and soiled containers as they discovered most of the violations are happening the most at the distribution end. “A container should ideally be returned to the manufacturer, where it is labelled and sealed afresh,” said Kathiravan. “But what is happening now is the vendors refill the containers multiple times with untreated water before returning it,” he said. Filling and packaging is often done manually, resulting in water being contaminated with E.Coli, a common bacterial pathogen linked to urinary tract infections and foodborne illnesses.
A can may be refilled only 35 times, but often, in practice, they are overused
Around 90 lakh litres of packaged drinking water is sold in Chennai per day – with sales peaking during summers. Of these, 75 lakh litres are sold in cans. There are around 620 licensed water brands operating through nearly 4,000 dealers in Chennai, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur. At least 80% of the supply of packaged water comes from units in neighbouring districts.
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