MGP conducts awareness programme on food adulteration

This is part of National Consumers Day 

Visitors to the market areas around the small clock tower leant about the various forms in which food is adulterated on a daily basis and the means of detecting them, here on Thurday.

It was organised by the Mysore Grahakara Parishat, a city-based NGO advocating consumers’ cause, and is part of a series of programmes to be held from December 22 to 27 as part of National Consumers Day celebrated on December 24 every year.

Students from St. Philomena’s College demonstrated the various kinds of adulteration that takes place while Chamundeshwari Electricity Supply Corporation (CESC), Mymul and Department of Weights and Measures were also part of the exercise conducting awareness on consumers rights.

The MGP also distributed booklets on various forms of food adulteration and its health implications besides providing information on simple tests to detect a few common adulterants in food. It was pointed out for instance that whole spices and condiments are adulterated with lead chromate and argemone seeds that could result in kidney failure, blindness and edema. Oils and fats tend to be adulterated with cheaper edible oils and animal fat apart from castor oil, mineral oil etc with long-term consequences for health.

Sugar and confectionery could be adulterated with saccharin and non-permitted colours while cereals and pulses could be adulterated with kesari dal.

The MGP said though there are laws again food adulteration there was no strict enforcement and the MCC was flayed for its apathetic attitude towards conducting random checks to crack down on adulteration.

The personnel from Department of Weights and Measures had displayed a few of the weighs that had been seized during random checks. The discrepancies in weights results in the consumers being cheated of the quantity and is reckoned to be rampant, said the personnel.