Preliminary findings of the recent raids conducted by the Health department have exposed the nasty practice of large scale use of adulterants in almost everything we eat.

Not only has the widespread practice of adulteration baffled the gullible consumers, it has posed danger to the public health at large.

Be it wheat flour, besan, spices, milk and milk products or pickles and murabbas, traders are experimenting with every ‘suitable adulterant’ which helps make products look better and hence draw more price.

Noteworthy are the examples of the seizure of nearly 34 quintals of spices along with their adulterants from two wholesale traders at Field Ganj on July 9 and a huge quantity of broken rice, infested with pest, being used as adulterant to make wheat flour look whiter at three mills in the district raided on July 17. They have revealed how the traders have been indulging in adulteration to jack up profits.

With the growing number of adulteration cases being reported in a large variety of food products, the situation is ringing alarm bells in the residents’ minds. Some residents, while reacting to the issue, say that the persons nabbed in such cases should get harsh punishment as it is tantamount to playing with the public health.

In 2007, the health department had taken 2,514 samples of various food items from across the state. Around 439 samples failed the tests under the Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) Act, 1954.

The department had conducted 36 raids in Ludhiana in 2007 and seized a huge quantity of adulterated food items. Around 327 samples were collected. Of them, 45 samples had failed the purity test. In 2008, as many as 211 samples of different food items have been collected so far and 12 of them have failed to live up to the standards set under the PFA Act.

Though AGMARK and ISI are considered as the standards of quality foods, sources in the health department say that most of the dealers who are involved in such malpractice generally have a political backing. “This is the reason why they have a flourishing business. The law against such defaulters should be made more stringent. Though there is a good conviction rate in such cases, the defaulters get a long period, sometimes a decade, before it happens,” said a health officer.

“Ever since the health and family welfare minister Laxmi Kanta Chawla has given us the go-ahead in the campaign against food adulteration, there has been no pressure on us,” district food inspectors Ravinder Garg and Manoj Khosla said.

Civil surgeon Dr SP Sharma says, “It is a matter of serious concern. Some traders are indulging in large scale use of adulterants. Only public awareness can check this menace. People should play an effective part and help us crack down on such persons.”

Food-testing laboratories and food inspectors are doing their jobs no doubt, but the consumers are oblivious of the murky goings in the shady world of adulteration. Adulteration of foodstuff has become the order of the day. Unless a serious view is taken on this account, we may land up with hazardous health problems, said a resident.

Residents and shopkeepers of Koocha Number 5 at Field Ganj, where the Health department recently conducted raids on wholesale traders of spices, were a confused lot till they were not able to figure out why many of them suffered breathing problems.

But now they are clear that the rootcause for their problems is the use of grinders by some dealers to manufacture spices in the congested marketplace.