Markfed begins exercise to review quality of food items

Ruchika M Khanna
Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, August 4
Amid a growing clamour over the alleged substandard food items being served in anganwaris of Punjab, the supply agency, Markfed, has begun an exercise to review the quality of items and probe other allegations of foreign material being found in packaged food.
In the past fortnight, there were complaints of foreign particles being found in pre-mixed food items and snacks in Moosa village of Mansa, Nihalsinghwala in Moga and Sherpur in Sangrur. Women and many people in the villages of the state have been complaining about the panjiri being made with soybean oil, which is not as nutritious as the panjiri supplied to them earlier that was cooked in desi ghee.
Other than this, there are allegations about one of the contract manufacturers of these items being earlier “blacklisted by both Verka and the Government of Himachal Pradesh”.
A senior official of Markfed said they had collected 250 samples of food items randomly, supplied to about 24,000 anganwaris and all samples had cleared the quality test at NABL laboratories. “We also re-checked the record of all our contract manufacturers and found that none of them was ever blacklisted by any government. One manufacturer was earlier working with Milkfed and their contract was mutually called off,” he said.
The official also said that they started supplying the soybean oil-based Panjiri after the recipe was approved for its nutritional content by the Food and Nutrition experts of PAU, Ludhiana. However, in villages, women and children are saying that the taste of the panjiri is bad, and they are refusing to consume it.