Milk scandal deepens

Just when one thought that the scandal over milk adulteration could not possibly get any bigger along comes confirmation that contamination exists even in unbranded powdered milk. A research team at Karachi University has found a high concentration of lead — a toxic metal — in samples of unbranded powdered milk tested recently. The lead content in dry milk samples collected from the city’s neighbourhoods of Quaidabad to Gulistan-e-Jauhar and from Orangi Town to Shah Faisal Colony was indeed alarming, setting off fears of serious health risks to both adults and children through chronic or short-term exposure. Traces of cadmium and arsenic were also found in a few limited samples but it is lead that poses the single biggest threat to consumers. High levels of exposure can result in damage to the brain and central nervous system and ultimately induce a life-threatening coma.

Dry milk is often sold at a cheaper rate than packaged milk and used as a nutritional source for children from poor and underprivileged backgrounds. Contamination is a more real than imagined threat during heat treatment, homogenisation, vacuum evaporation, seeding and packaging — the different stages of preparing dry milk — in case substandard material is used in any process. Since most of these processes are carried out in small houses and not proper, well-equipped industrial units, there is always the danger of contamination due to the widespread use of chemicals and unhygienic conditions there.

Despite lack of national guidelines on milk processing and packaging, provinces seem to have evolved their own stilted responses. For instance, Sindh unlike Punjab has not as yet devised a proper monitoring and regulatory system, leaving its inhabitants vulnerable to the twin threats of adulteration and contamination.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2018.

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