Chandigarh, November 10:
Health Minister Mr. Balbir Singh Sidhu today flagged off 3 more Food safety vehicles equipped with sophisticated equipment which has capability to test more than 50 quality parameters of Food samples on spot.
Giving further details, he said that 2 more such vehicles are in line which will be rolled out very soon in State of Punjab. Total 07 Vehicles will be in place to check the quality of food articles in Punjab. This initiative may prove to be effective to reduce the adulteration to a greater extent and thus Public of Punjab will get safe and standard food.
The Food and Drug Administration has setup new Food and Drug testing laboratories with “State of Art” facility at Kharar District SAS Nagar with the capacity of testing 15000 food samples per annum. In the year 2019, the Food testing lab has received about 8700 samples of food matrices out of which 1795 samples found to be substandard, he said.
Being proactive approach adopted by FDA department in festival season to ensure the quality of sweets, FDA has recently conducted survey to test the quality of Khoya in state of Punjab which is being used to prepare sweets adding that he highlighted under this focused campaign, 66 number of samples were drawn for test and analysis, out of which 08 found to be substandard.
Mr. Sidhu said that Food and Drug Administration has already put in place 2 Mobile food testing vans which were sent in each and every district periodically to test Milk, Water and spices samples. 795 number of Volunteer samples had been tested in last two months by 02 vans, among which 73 number of samples found substandard and action have been taken against the violators under Food Safety Act.
Underscoring the acheivements of FDA, the Minister said that another feather in the cap of Food and Drug Administration is that Food Lab has been awarded with NABL accreditation in the last month only. Now Food and Drug Administration Lab Punjab is among the few labs in the country to have NABL accreditation.
