Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Saqib Nisar on Saturday prohibited dairy farmers from injecting hormones in cows and buffaloes to increase milk production, during a hearing of a case regarding tampered milk in Punjab.
Hearing a suo motu case in the Supreme Court (SC) Lahore registry, the CJP said that injections given to cows and buffaloes lead to diseases like cancer in children and adults consuming the milk.
He also branded packaged milk "unfit for consumption" because the packages contain formalin chemical, which is extremely dangerous for human health.
Disclaimers on tea whiteners
Justice Nisar also ordered companies producing tea whiteners to state on the packaging that their product is not a substitute for milk.
A representative of Engro Food's Tarang insisted that their product mentioned that the tea whitener was not a substitute for children's milk; However, the chief justice turned down his objections and ordered the company to change their design.
The case was adjourned for two weeks.
Unsafe drinking water: CM Punjab can be summoned to court, says CJP
During a hearing of a separate case regarding unsafe drinking water in the SC Lahore registry, it was disclosed that samples of water collected from the CJP's chamber were polluted and unfit for consumption.
Justice Nisar expressed alarm at the report by the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and said that the government needs to decide its priorities. Referring to a similar ongoing case in SC Karachi registry where the CJP had summoned Sindh chief minister to court, Justice Nisar said that he could summon Punjab's chief minister as well.
"Citizens are being made to drink water that is poisoned with arsenic," he claimed. He further said that if appropriate action was not taken to make water safe for consumption, it will only take one suo motu notice for the SC to halt the Orange Line Metro Train project (OLMT).
An SC bench last year had allowed the Punjab government to continue work on the OLMT after the project was halted by the Lahore High Court in 2016.
He asked the provincial chief secretary if he was aware of the lakes and rivers where sewerage water from major urban cities was being dumped.
