A recent central government directive banning the sale of loose mustard oil has put in jeopardy the entire Rs 2,000-crore mustard oil trade in West Bengal.

The directive asks the state government to ensure that mustard oil being sold in the state undergoes quality checks.

The state government has already announced that implementing the ban in West Bengal will not be practicable. The state has the largest demand for mustard oil in the country, at round 35,000 tonnes a year, with almost every village having a `ghani' (country oil mill).

"Testing facilities as they exist in West Bengal are pathetic and even alarming. Often the test results are available only after 15-20 days by which time normally a stock of mustard oil is exhausted," said MK Singhania, chairman of the publicity committee of the federation.

According toSinghania, under the present system the dealers are bound to rely on the oil supplied by the oil mills as they have no viable way of getting the oil tested for adulteration.

The only place where such testing can be done in Calcutta is at the Calcutta Municipal Corporation laboratory. The situation in the districts is more serious as facilities for testing foodstuff there are awfully inadequate.

The proposal to allow only packaged mustard oil to be sold might run into stiff opposition. Mustard oil being the staple oil in West Bengal, is often bought in small quantities by daily wage earners to meet their daily requirements.

The fact that Dhara and other brands with the prestigious Agmark, which were found contaminated, tell a lot about the government's system for checking adulteration, he pointed out.

Meanwhile, there is an uptrend in the prices of mustard oil and other edible oils. The prices of mustard oil, according to certain market reports, once even touched Rs 64 a kg.

Insight:

In WestBengal, mustard oil is the common man's cooking medium and it is bought in small quantities by daily wage earners. The ban on loosely sold mustard oil has been hurting this large section of the state's population the most. It is true that prudence must be exercised in the wake of the recent outbreak of dropsy. But it needs to be understood that argemone adulteration has been caused by the crushing of mustard seeds in which small quantities of argemone seeds were also present. Traces of argemone oil have been detected even in sealed packages of popular Agmark-certified brands.

Therefore, making it mandatory for all mustard oil to be sold in the packaged form and ensuring that all packers are registered entities is not a practical solution. Besides, the traders' allegation that government testing facilities are grossly inadequate is perfectly justified. Officials in government laboratories have also admitted that not only are their testing facilities inadequate, they are also not fool-proof. The governmentshould therefore, urgently spruce-up its food-testing facilities and ready itself to tackle similar food-adulteration problems in the future.