During the festive season, incidents of food adulteration continue to witness an acute spike, which is a matter of serious concern and puts the onus on the concerned department to check the defaulters. Even in Haryana, samples of food and beverages fail on a large scale during the festive season. There is a constant demand that maximum samples of food items should be collected during the festive season so that adulteration can be controlled. Meanwhile, information received from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) department revealed that the capacity of the state food testing lab has increased.
The capacity to check samples in the state’s Karnal and Chandigarh labs has increased by two to two and a half times and due to this, the increase in sample checking will help in checking the defaulters who practice adulterating food items. Following the increased capacity, both labs will be able to check samples from other states as well as generate revenues. The lab’s capacity to check food samples has increased significantly. Earlier, the capacity to check samples in both Karnal and Chandigarh labs was only between 3 to 4 thousand, which has been increased up to 10 thousand food samples a year after their upgradation and apart from this, both labs will be able to release timely reports of the samples filled. Notably, Chandigarh and Karnal labs receive samples from 13 and 9 districts respectively. Further, the information received depicted that crores of rupees have been spent on upgrading Karnal and Chandigarh food labs as ultra-modern equipment and machines have been installed in both labs. Around an amount of Rs 11 crore and 5 crore has been spent on Chandigarh and Karnal food lab respectively. Out of the total expenditure on both the labs, the government of India and the state share a fixed amount.
Out of the total sanctioned 45 posts of Food Safety Officers (FSO), more than 40 are lying vacant which results in delay of reports of food samples. Keeping in view this, the department has written to the Haryana Public Service Commission (HPSC) several times to fill these posts, but till now the situation remains the same. The situation is such that the work is being carried out by bringing experts from other departments like the Health Department and Animal Husbandry Department on deputation.