Poison on sale

Unlike many government entities that exist only in name, the Punjab Food Authority (PFA) is doing good work to protect the health of people. It seized 50,000 litres of toxic cooking oil the other day from two trucks, and sealed the oil mill’s branches in Lahore and Hasilpur. The PFA Director General, Captain Mohammad Usman (retd), said the oil was prepared after mixing used oil with animal fat and bones, which are highly harmful to human health. The PFA sealed the mill for violating the provincial food law. The poisonous oil was supplied to restaurants, hotels and other oil mills, claims the PFA official.

Such oil can only be used in biodiesel, and consuming edible oil mixed with toxic oil can cause grave health issues for humans. It mainly causes liver and heart diseases. Lately, the PFA had raided a factory where baby diapers and things like these were being manufactured by recycling hazardous hospital waste. Earlier, it had foiled an attempt at transferring quality foodstuff from warehouses of the Utility Stores to private warehouses. Possibly the plan was later to shift rotten stuff from private warehouses to Utility Stores’ warehouses.

Fifty thousand litres of toxic edible oil show the extent of food adulteration in the country. The media has been warning people of the increasingly dangerous trend of food adulteration. How unscrupulous traders adulterate foodstuff with toxic items in their blind pursuit of profit. We have to bear in mind many people have meals and snacks in eateries and to the health risks they are exposed. Many are compelled to eat in restaurants because their families don’t live with them. Now adulteration has touched new heights as even when desperate people buy poison to commit suicide, the poison does not work. It turns out to be fake. Sometimes shopkeepers sell poison for consideration of extra money. In most cases, this too is counterfeit.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 1^st, 2019.

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