PESHAWAR: The government has planned to expand Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Food Safety and Halal Food Authority to 15 more districts in order to effectively check the sale of substandard food items and ensure provision of quality food commodities on reasonable prices to consumers.

This was stated by the food authority director general Suhail Khan at a media briefing at his office here on Thursday. He said that the authority had discarded 73,622 kilogrammes of different food items and sealed 168 shops during a 12-day campaign starting from the second week of November.

Flanked by director operations Dr Azmat Wazir, the DG said that vigilance cells had been set up at divisional level to receive public complaints about sale of adulterated food items in various districts. He said that the seized fake food items include soft drinks, milk, spices, etc.

The operation against adulterators, he said, had been launched after serving warning notices to them. He said during the operation over 10,000 litres milk was discarded and 20,000kg of rotten fruits were recovered from juice shops and disposed of.

He said that another such operation would be launched soon to overcome the sale of substandard food items.

Published in Dawn, November 22nd, 2019