Madurai marks itself as a pioneer in providing utterly sensitized information about food products and testing the quality to ensure healthy Consumption. In the wake of same efforts Food safety department of Madurai has put the mobile vans in use.
Madurai becomes the first part of the country to ensure the food safety operations and tests on mobile vans across its market place. Vehicles are provided by the apex food regulatory of country, FSSAI and are functional now in all of its capacity.
Food safety officials, Tamil Nadu told that two of such vehicles are provided each costing 50 lakhs each. One of the two are already working and testing since last year, but this is the second mobile van delivery which is done this time by the authority. Right now testing is done in the cases of sweets and related stuffsstuffs, especially starting with khova. Said, Food safety officer, Dr. M Somasundaram.
“It is a major ingredient of some sweets like milk peda which is often adulterated with sugar and starch. When the quality of khova is set right, the final products will be of good quality,” he said.
An analyst of the van said that the services of the van will be set open soon in the public domain and will also be testing other stuffs like oil, packaged beverages etc.
“The initiative will help to create awareness on quality of products people are consuming. The vehicle will reach out to people in rural areas too,” the official said.
Officials said that each testing will attract a nominal fee, which needs to be paid by the people. They are in the process of fixing a fee for each testing. Normally, it takes up to Rs 6000 to get a food material tested in a private laboratory, but one can get it tested at a fraction of the cost, they said.