A
day after announcing to resume the milk supply within municipal limits,
milkmen, mostly Gujjars, today asked the Jammu Municipal Corporation (JMC) to
upgrade its procedure of testing milk, alleging that it was "obsolete and
below national standards".
"To
save milk from converting into curd, a limited amount of ice is added to
maintain the temperature of milk in summer season, which generally has a minute
effect on it but there is no change in its fat content. This can no way be
termed as adulteration," Jameel Choudhary of the Dodhi Gujjar Association
told reporters here.
He
dared the civic body to show any provision or norm of the Food Safety Act,
which allowed them to destroy milk during the collection of samples.
He
demanded that the rates of milk and other milk products be enhanced with
immediate effect as the Gujjars had been suffering losses because of high cost
of cattle feed and fodder.
JMC
officials, meanwhile, blame the state government for its failure to release
funds for purchase of mobile testing labs to check milk adulteration at all
entry points of the city.
"A
proposal to purchase new mobile testing labs to check the quality of milk was
mooted
last
year after the release of an alarming report by the Food Safety and Standard
Authority of India (FSSAI) in January 2012. The report stated that 83 per cent
of milk sold in urban areas of the state was not safe for consumption. However,
the proposal is yet to be implemented due to red tapism," said an
official.
In
2012, the FSSAI had collected 18 samples from different areas of the state as
part of its nationwide study and had found that most common form of
adulteration in the state was that related to Glucose and Skimmed Milk Products
(SMP).
"The
civic body is still dependent on the lab which takes days to give out the
results. Mobile labs can provide us with a tool for on-the-spot checking,"
the official said.
Kiran
Wattal, JMC Commissioner, and Vinod Sharma, JMC Health officer, were
unavailable for comments.
No comments:
Post a Comment