It is high time for consumers to realise that ‘Everything white is not Milk’, said Kahan Singh Pannu, Director Mission Tandarust Punjab while interacting with the representatives of Progressive Dairy Farmers Association, Punjab here at Kisan Bhawan on Wednesday. Detailing the comprehensive strategy to check milk adulteration in the State, he informed that Government will come down heavily upon the milk adulterators.
He said monitoring committees would be constituted in every district under the chairmanship of Deputy Commissioners, including the representatives of Health and Dairy department along with the members of Progressive Dairy Farmers Association (PDFA) and other the Dairy Farmers. These committees will undertake extensive checking to stop the milk adulteration. The committees will also sensitize the sweet shop owners to avoid use of adulterated milk in the preparation of sweets coupled with a warning that defaulters would invite stern action.Simultaneously, the consumers would be made aware of checking the milk adulteration and would be empowered to get the milk checked from the local ‘milk check locations’. He said that various milk check points would be established, equipped with latest milk testing machines manned by trained personnel.
The entire process would be supervised by Food Safety Officers and other trained doctors, under the Food Safety Act.Pannu also informed that two more laboratories for determining the quality of collected samples would be roped in and declared as State Testing labs and multiple samples would be taken at a time and sent simultaneously to different labs in order to get correct reports and eliminate the possibility of mis-reporting.MD Tandarust Punjab said that adulteration in milk and milk products is not only harmful from health aspect but is also detrimental to dairy farmers who fail to sell quality milk owing to its higher cost.Reiterating the same sentiment, Daljit Singh Sadarpura ,President PDFA said that the cost of production of quality milk is about Rs. 30 per litre but due to the adulteration, inferior quality milk is easily available in the market from Rs. 23 to 26 per litre. Due to the widespread malpractice genuine dairy farmers who chose the dairy business over the traditional farming are facing huge losses. Offering full support to the Government, dairy farmers requested to tighten the noose around the adulterators.Besides others, Inderjit Singh Director Dairy Department, Dr. Amrit Warring from the Department of Health and District Presidents of PDFA from all across the state were present on the occasion.