‘Food safety on wheels’ unused amidst rising food adulteration in state
Updated: Nov 9th, 2023
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| FDCA 'Food Safety on Wheels' (img: File) |
While, the Food and Drugs Control Administration (FDCA) is making sure that no stone has been left unturned, the department’s initiative ‘Food Safety on Wheels’ is lying stationary and unutilised. Ironically, this comes when the FDCA is intensifying its efforts to combat food adulteration through citywide raids.
‘Food Safety on Wheels’, was supposed to work as a lab wagon, keeping a check on food quality in the markets.
Despite being worth crores of rupees, these wagons are lying stationary at the FDCA office in Gandhinagar. The department has to manually undertake the operations as of now, which has been falling short to address the rising cases of food adulteration.
Department’s procedure
The FDCA’s operations include sampling the foods and then sending them to the Vadodara-based laboratory for testing. This process takes at least two weeks to yield results for the tested foods.
Until the results are obtained, the food items in question continue to sell in massive proportions in the market.
In the raids initiated in two cities in Banaskantha district, FDCA encountered sub-par quality ghee, duplicate kinds of milk solids (maava), and low-quality sweets.
