Over 25kg of sweets destroyed during food inspection

Ludhiana: The food safety team of the health department swung into action and carried out intensive checking drives in different markets of the city on Thursday morning, and inspecting several milk producing units. During inspection, the food safety team destroyed more than 25kg of sweet items procured from different sweet shops, along with samples of several milk products, after getting information about their contamination with artificial colours or flavours, which are harmful to health.

District health officer Andesh Kang said, “With the beginning of the festival season across the nation, the consumption of milk products has gone up, forcing the traders into adulteration to increase their daily production. Following the direction of higher authorities, a special team of food safety officials was constituted to carry out raids regularly across food manufacturing units, and take samples to check their purity.”

To ensure the adherence of food items to quality, a food safety team conducted a raid on the premises of two milk producing units on Thursday, and found them violating norms by running in unhygienic conditions, and indulging in adulteration.

Kang added: “After collecting all samples from manufacturing units, we have delivered it to the state food inspection laboratory for further testing. The district health department will now charge the adulterators heavy penalties. We have issued proper guidelines to all city-based vendors that they should avoid the use of newspapers while wrapping food items, and not use their bare hands to collect hard cash and serve food items to customers, to avoid the spread of viruses.”