Ahead of festive season, samples of food taken

Sweetmeat shop owners told not to use artificial colours

Health officials during a drive in Kapurthala. 

Kapurthala, September 19

In view of the upcoming festival season, a team of experts, including Dr Harjot Pal Singh, Assistant Commissioner (Food), and Satnam Singh, Food Safety Officer, Kapurthala, today checked various food items and took samples from eateries.

Dr Harjot said six samples, including khoya burfi, paneer, kalakand, desi ghee and besan, had been seized by the Food Wing, Kapurthala. Inspection and sampling were done near Satnarayan Mandir, Kapurthala, and Katra Bazaar, Sultanpur Lodhi. Sweetmeat shop owners were directed not to use artificial colours in sweets or other food items and aluminium leaf as a coating on sweets.

Permitted food colours could be used for the preparation of sweets. However, these too should be put only in permissible limits i.e. 20 gm of food colour in 100 kg of sweets. Chemical colours should not be used in sweets or any other food item as these cause cancer of small and large intestines and kidneys, the sweet manufacturers were told. They were also directed not to store khoya and sweets in cold stores.

“The department will conduct a special checking of the cold stores to check khoya and sweets items. However, the shop owners could store sweets in their own cold chambers for a limited period of time, but they have to ensure that the quality of sweets/khoya doesn’t deteriorate,” Dr Harjot said.

All food businessmen dealing in sweets are directed to ensure that they don’t procure khoya and sweets from other states as that was deemed to be of inferior quality. Khoya and sweets should be obtained only from known and reputed establishments. They were also instructed to take special care of easily perishable items such as milk and milk products. These need to be preserved at a temperature up to 4°C.

The samples collected have been dispatched to the State Food Laboratory, Kharar, and the report of the analysis will be made available to the department at the earliest. Further, legal action will be initiated in the court of law against offenders as per the report of analysis of the laboratory under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, and Rules and Regulations, 2011.

The checking drive by the Food Wing, Kapurthala, to curb the menace of adulteration in food items will be continued in the future also to ensure that residents get pure, healthy and unadulterated sweets and other food items in the upcoming festival season, experts said.