New Delhi : The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) has asked all its food safety commissioners to collect samples of MDH, Everest and all other spices from across India to find whether the spice manufacturing companies are following the standard procedure or not.
The development took place after Hong Kong banned the sale of popular Indian brands MDH Pvt. and Everest Food Products Pvt. following alleged detection of the carcinogenic pesticide ethylene oxide in several spice mixes. Ironically, last week Singapore took similar action against Everest, alleging the presence of ethylene oxide at levels surpassing permissible limits.
Disclosing this to ETV Bharat, a top government official told this correspondent that all the collected samples of the spices will be tested in 239 micro biological and 300 mobile labs of FSSAI spread across India.
“The FSSAI will get the result within the next 15-20 days. If we find any irregularities in the spice production, we will take stringent action including lodging criminal cases against the company,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
Classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, ethylene oxide poses serious health risks, including the risk of breast cancer.
“It’s the Export Inspection Council of Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) who conducts testing of exported food items. In the case of domestic food products, FSSAI conducts the testing, the official said.
The official said that an alert has also been issued to the spice board over the issue.
Both the spice product companies (MDH and Everest) have also been asked to provide the formulations of their product.
As per data provided by the official, FSSAI analysed 1,77,51 fruits and vegetable products to check chemical adulteration in the year 2022-23. Of the total analysed, 44,626 samples found non-conforming, including 6,579 unsafe, 21,917 sub standard and 16,130 with labelling defects and misleading. As many as 38,096 civil cases were registered in the same year against manufacturers resulting in the conviction of 28,464 people with a Rs 33.23 crore penalty imposed against them. In the same year, 4818 criminal cases have been filed with a conviction against 1188 people besides imposition of Rs 2.75 crore as penalty.
According to the statistics, in 2023-24, FSSAI collected 166763 samples of fruits and vegetable products to check chemical adulteration. Of the total 12,27,95 analysed samples, 24,794 were found non-conforming.
As per data, FSSAI also collected 38,661 samples under different spice categories along with 479 samples of curry powder and 3478 samples of 3478 mixed masala.
At present a total of 56188 central license, state license and registration have been issued under the food product category (spices).
Meanwhile, referring to the Nestle controversy, the official said that similar testing will be done of all domestic and international baby food products found domestically by the FSSAI laboratories.
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