Indian food faces contamination problems, says survey

By Ankush Chibber, 12-Jan-2012

After the revelation that most of the milk sold in India is adulterated, there is a slight respite with a similar survey on food products, which found that a little more than 10% of such products were contaminated.

Under a survey done by the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), it was observed that around 13% of both packaged and loose food items sold across the country were contaminated.

The survey, which was conducted by field researchers from the FSSAI, saw more than 117,000 loose and packaged samples being collected and analysed at government laboratories over a year for possible contamination. The survey found that 14,000 samples or 12.65% were adulterated.

The FSSAI survey found that food adulteration rates were the highest in states like Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand, which had 40% and 34% of their samples contaminated respectively. Interestingly, the food adulteration rates in Delhi and Karnataka were lowest at 4% and 5% respectively   ..... read more
.