The UP Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday said it has found detergent in one of the samples of Mother Dairy’s milk packets, a claim contested by the Delhi-based company.
“Results showed that the samples were sub-standard and one of the two contained detergent,” UP FDA official in Agra, Ram Naresh Yadav, told.
The samples had been picked up from Mother Dairy’s collection centres in Bah in November 2014. “The samples were first sent to Lucknow and later to Kolkata on the demand of the company,” Yadav said.
Mother Dairy, however, has categorically denied any adulteration of milk it supplies in pouches. Sandeep Ghosh, the head of Milk, Fruits and Vegetables Section at Mother Dairy in Delhi, said, “Mother Dairy milk undergoes four levels of thorough testing at various levels — input, processing, dispatches and even at market level.”
Every tanker of milk reaching at plants passes a series of 23 stringent quality tests to check any deviation from defined parameters. These tests assist in detecting contamination of milk through water, urea, detergent, oil, etc, he said.
“For any such adulteration, the milk is immediately rejected from further action,” he added. The organisation follows 100% testing protocol rather than resorting to random testing procedures, Ghosh said.
Mother Dairy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board.