The Gujarat State Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) has seized 567 liters of adulterated ghee (clarified butter) and 3,849 kg of sweets in Banaskantha district. The combined value of the seized items from two manufacturing units amounts to Rs 9.29 lakhs. This action was taken following raids conducted by the FDCA to combat the production and distribution of adulterated food products.
While adulterated ghee worth Rs 2.49 lakh was seized from the premises of a food products firm in Deesa town, sweets worth Rs 6.80 lakh, made from adulterated 'mawa' (condensed milk), were recovered from the premises of a dairy products unit in Palanpur town on Saturday, an official release said.
"To monitor the movement of officials in the area, the owner of the food products unit had installed CCTV cameras 500 meters away from the premises," said FDCA commissioner, HG Koshia. "Since we knew about this modus operandi, our officials went there late in the night and climbed up the wall to enter the unit, where we found empty drums of vegetable ghee. A preliminary probe established that the owner, Lomesh Limbuwala, was mixing vegetable ghee with real ghee and selling it as pure ghee or cow ghee in five-litre, 200 ml and 35 ml packets," said Koshia.
The seized samples of spurious ghee were sent to a designated laboratory for the analysis of the contents, the FDCA said. As per the information received by the FDCA, dairy products unit owner Kailash Khandelwal was preparing sweets using adulterated mawa made of milk powder and vegetable oils.
According to FDCA, the bags containing prepared sweets did not have any labels about the date of manufacturing, date of expiry, batch number, or name and address of the manufacturer, which is a violation of the Food Safety and Standards Act.
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