24th Dec 2015
Consumer Online Foundation and Patient Safety and Access Initiative of India Foundation (a PSM India Initiative) celebrate National Consumer Day on 24th December 2015 in Jaipur along with the Government of Rajasthan, Discussions shall take place on the theme of the day on how to improve accessibility to “Safe and Healthy food: combating food adulteration”.
Accessibility to safe and healthy food is a consumer right and of prime importance to all consumers as it plays a key role is ensuring a healthy body.
The growing menace of food adulteration especially in Dairy products is alarming and needs serious attention as Consumers are fast falling prey to this demon. 2,000 litres of synthetic milk was seized in Patiala. This milk was being used for manufacturing sweets, ghee, khoa, cream, and other dairy products. The products made and consumed from this synthetic milk is known to cause irreparable damage to our body organs especially our kidneys. It is also of course a slow poison for consumers suffering from hypertension and heart ailments. Loose milk is not only adulterated with water of dubious quality, it is also exposed to dust and light, both of which cause rapid deterioration.
Milk is a good example to demonstrate that such food is required every day for children and adults, irrespective of being rich or poor. Several such food accessed every day by consumers are found to be adulterated by serious adulterants, which are not only unhealthy but dangerous and threat to life and body organs. The food colours that are often used contain lead and arsenic and can damage kidneys. Food adulteration certainly has become one of the biggest proliferating industry.
What is however disturbing is the complete indifference being shown by the consumers as well as the regulatory bodies in checking the menace of adulterated food products, fruits and vegetables.
Consumers must fight against all such food adulteration and encourage safe and healthy food made accessible to all at the most affordable price. We must demand a strong law to catch the culprits and punish them with strong deterrents like life imprisonment and or confiscation of all assets. What is urgently needed is a massive and widespread clamp down against the unscrupulous adulterators. This will take some time, but let us begin with what we can do. Join us at Rajasthan on 24th December and pledge towards a healthy nation; Zero Adulteration India !