FDA, police crack down on adulterated silver foil, milk-based items that are used in sweets.
This Diwali, be wary before gorging on the sweets you love. They could be made from adulterated mawa and covered with spurious silver foils (warak).
Despite the police and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials cracking down on sweet marts in the last two days, activists claim that adulterated food items — especially khoya, mawa, paneer and warak — have already flooded the market.
“The onus is on the consumers. They have to be alert and buy mithais from FDA-approved stalls,” advised Arun Saxena, president of International Consumer Rights Protection Council.
“But, simply buying sweets from FDA-approved stalls will not mean that they are safe. The consumer must check the sweets before buying them because a large amount of spurious mawa may have already entered the market,” he added.
Urging citizens to come forward and file complaint, Saxena said: “It is only when consumers file formal complaints that such shops and establishments will be penalised.”
The police had recently busted a gang that was illegally smuggling mawa and ghee into the city from Gujarat and arrested eight people and seized 525kg of mawa and 150kg of ghee.
Even the civic health department has jumped on the bandwagon to weed out adulteration.
“Adulterated mawa is a health hazard. Hence, we have launched a sustained drive against spurious food and deputed our officers and staff with the FDA teams,’’ said Dr Anil Bandiwadekar, civic executive health officer.
Doing their bit to avoid food poisoning cases during the festive season, a few popular sweet marts have stopped using mawa in their products.
“We have completely stopped the use of mawa. Our mithais are pure and made from dry fruits,” said Manoj Thakkar of MH Foods that runs American Dry Fruits.
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