Food Safety Teams raid paneer manufacturing unit in Samrala, seizes huge cache of spurious products

LUDHIANA: Working on a tip off, Food Safety Team of Ludhiana conducted a raid at a Paneer manufacturing unit in an interior village of Samrala on Friday. Huge cache of spurious Milk and Milk Products(M&MP) were seized including 3 quintals of paneer, 90 litres of palm oil, 5 quintals of ghee, 39 empty Palm oil tins of 15 litres each, 5 sealed palm oil tins of 15 litre capacity each and 13 bags of 25kg capacity of verka skimmed milk powder and 4 bags of 25kg each of other skimmed milk powder.

Giving more details, KS Pannu, Commissioner, Food and Drugs Administration, Punjab said, "Around 9:30pm, we received an information that huge quantity of spurious paneer was being prepared in a manufacturing unit in Samrala and it was to be dispatched to market at the daybreak. So, immediately springing into action Food Safety Team of Ludhiana conducted a raid at the said premises at around 10pm. The Paneer manufacturing unit was being run from a house and when the food safety team reached there, the premises of the factory was locked from outside but the workers were working there. With the support of locals the lock was opened and a huge quantity of spurious M&MP was found."

Pannu also added, “The entire operation lasted for about 4 hours and a sizeable amount of spurious Milk and Milk Products were seized, including 3 quintals of paneer, 90 litres of palm oil, 5 quintals of ghee, 39 empty Palm oil tins of 15 litres each, 5 sealed Palm oil tins of 15 litre capacity each and 13 bags of 25 kg capacity of Verka skimmed milk powder and 4 bags of 25kg each of other skimmed milk powder."

Pannu also informed that a raid was also conducted by the department in Jalandhar and approximately 2 quintals curd, spurious desi ghee to the tune of 8 quintals and 35 packets of Skimmed milk powder were seized from the spot. In a similar inspection at Mansa 11 samples were taken including 8 samples of milk and milk products, 3 of milk, 1 of curd, 2 of khoya and two of paneer. The samples collected from all the raids have been sent for lab analysis.