LAHORE, Sept 23: Certain unscrupulous and dishonest vanaspati manufacturers and traders involved in the sale of unprocessed RBD (refined, bleached, and deodarized) palm oil all over the country are playing with the lives of people, especially from the poorer segments of society.

RBD palm oil, imported from Malaysia, resembles vanaspati, and can directly be filled in plastic bags and canisters to be passed on to consumers as vanaspati ghee without homogenization which is needed to lower its melting point below the human body temperature. Moreover, the processing of the oil also frees it of all “foreign particles” that might have been added to it during transportation from Malaysia to Pakistan as well as within the country.

RBD palm oil is exported from Malaysia in a ready-to-eat form, Malaysian Palm Oil (MPO) Council country manager Faisal Iqbal told reporters here on Monday. “However, it needs to be processed once it reaches here at the port and then to the ghee manufacturing plants to make it fit for human consumption, and remove impurities added to it during its transportation,” he said.

There are 104 vanaspati manufacturing plants spread all across the country. However, some 70 of them are said to be operational. “It is hard to tell who follows the good manufacturing practices, and who doesn’t. Even the quality of the homogenized or processed RBD palm oil varies, depending upon the technology a manufacturer has. Nothing wrong with RBD palm oil. It is bad manufacturing and production practices which need to be eliminated to safeguard the interest of consumers,” he added. Besides, he said, “some traders are also involved in filling in canisters of reputed (vanaspati) ghee brands, damaging their market goodwill as well.”

Asked what the MPO Council has done to “protect the repute” of the commodity, he added his organization had taken up the quality control issue with the authorities concerned time and again. “The laws require to be applied rather more sternly for preventing the sale of substandard or poor quality vanaspati to consumers. We require better quality checks because, in the final analysis, it will be beneficial not only for consumers but also for the commodity.”

Pakistan imports nearly 1.3 million tons of edible palm oil or its products —- RBD palm oil, palm olein, etc —- annually to meet its requirements. Over 92 per cent of RBD palm oil and palm olein is used in the manufacture of vanaspati. Besides edible oil, some such inedible palm oil products as stearin are also shipped in to the country in small quantities for industrial use.

Total edible oil and ghee requirements of the country are said to be close to 2.5 million tons a year. A better part of the total requirement —- about 70 per cent —- is met through imports.