August 04, 2008	Monday	Sha'aban 1 429

KARACHI, Aug 3: A large number of food items and other edible commodities available in the market are adulterated with different contaminants, many of which are injurious to health, it is learnt.

According to sources, though food inspectors of the city district government’s regulation and quality control (health) department carry out raids and collect samples, many of which turn out to be adulterated, and the culprits are booked, owing to the ridiculously low fines imposed on them, the menace of adulteration persists.

One of the main reasons why the adulterators flout the law could be that there is not a single example in which an adulterator sentenced to imprisonment (though it is very rare) by a lower court has actually served his complete term, as the few people ever sentenced to prison term move the higher courts and are acquitted by them.

The most glaring of adulteration is this that the prices of various spices – such as chillies, turmeric, etc -- available in powered form are less than the cost of these items in raw form, though during grinding some quantity is lost and expenses of grinding and profit of the additional people is also included in the final product.

The sources in the department told Dawn that various ingredients had been found in samples of different food items collected by the staff and checked in the city government’s laboratory.

The food items and the adulteration used in them, according to sources, are: chaff and colour is added to red chillies during grinding; papaya seeds and colour are added to raw black peppers; chaff and colour is added to coriander powder; low-quality ground rice and colour is added to turmeric powder; low-quality pulses, yellow peas, rice and wheat in powdered form and colour are added to gram flour, refined flour, semolina are taken out of good quality wheat flour; low-quality sea salt, which is not properly filtered, is added to the relatively expensive Lahori salt; gram skin and colour are added to both green and black tea leaves.

Bacteria find their way into the juices when either the containers are damaged or they are not properly stored. Water, ice, cow milk, goat milk or sheep milk are added to buffalo milk and sometimes corn flour is also added so that it does not become diluted.

Low-quality or used ghee and oil are used in bakery items. Rice flour, colour, acid etc are added to tomato ketchup. Cow, sheep and goat milks are added to buffalo milk to prepare milk powder. Acid in diluted form is sold as the vinegar. Bacteria may find their way into packed milk owing to improper storage or mishandling. Artificial flavours and colours are added to custard powder.

Low quality supari, chemicals, artificial katha, colour is used in paan-masala.

Simply tap water is packed in bottles and sold as mineral water which sometimes even contains e-coli. Low-quality sugar, brown sugar and colours are used in preparing syrups.

Low-quality chillies, oil and acid in diluted form (substituting vinegar) are used in pickles. Sheep, goat, cow milk are mixed to get ghee from these and is sold as ghee taken from buffalo milk. Ice is prepared from tap water. Acid is used in soya sauce, low- quality chillies, acid and colour is used in chilly sauce, low-grade colours that are used for industrial purposes are sold as food colours. Artificial katha is sold as natural katha (which is the skin of a tree trunk).

Responding to Dawn queries, Chief Food Inspector Abdul Waheed Bhatti, who with his 12 deputies is in charge of catching adulterators in the city, suggested that more inspectors be recruited as the city was too big for his team. He also suggested that a special magistrate be posted exclusively to try adulterators, as was a previous practice, so that cases were decided within a few weeks. Now the cases are heard by judicial magistrates, who are already overburdened, and some of the cases have been pending for over five years.

He, however, insisted that the situation of adulteration was not as bad in the city as it was perceived as “only 20 per cent of the samples collected by food inspectors are found adulterated”.