Tag Archives: india

Children vomit after lizard found in midday meal in India

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Barely a week after 54 students of a government middle school in Sitamarhi district fell ill after eating midday meal (MDM) in which a snake was found, some children were taken ill in Siwan district on Friday after eating midday meal in which a dead lizard was found.

lizardState education department principal secretary R K Mahajan told TOI, “The incident took place at an upgraded middle school in Sonbarsa under Maharajganj block of Siwan district. One of the children reported to have found a dead lizard in his food and started vomiting. A few other students also vomited after some time.”

“The students were taken to the primary health centre as a precautionary measure and we have sought a report from the district officials on the incident,” he said.

India bakery closed after food safety raids

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The production centre and outlets of a city-based bakery-chain were closed down following raids conducted by food safety inspectors here on Tuesday.

bakery-biscuit-500x500According to officials, they organised the raid after they received a complaint from the Accountant-General’s Office. Here, sandwiches brought from the bakery’s outlet inside a retail store at Statue were being served during a conference and the bread was found to have fungus on it, a food safety inspector said.

Inspectors visited the bakery’s production centre at Vanross Junction. They alleged that it was functioning in a very unhygienic environment, citing examples of food being laid out without any netting or protection against pests or contamination.

Officials said a few freezers were not working and that bulk of the meat and vegetables found here was unfit for consumption. The outlets at Bakery Junction and Kowdiar were also inspected. Food safety inspectors said they found cakes and pastries marked with expiry dates that extend their natural shelf-life. 

Meat shops and eateries to come under police scan in India

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In the wake of seizure of a huge quantity of rotten poultry meat recently, police and food safety department have decided to clamp down on illegal meat shops, besides monitoring eateries and meat shops in Ernakulam.

The inspections and surveillance activities will be carried out separately by both police and food safety department, according to sources.

goat.meat.india“In the context of seizure of rotten meat, we will inspect meat shops in the city. Many of them have been operating secretly without valid licence,” said K Ajith Kumar, assistant commissioner, food safety, Ernakulam. However, he refused to divulge more details.

On Friday, police and health department had seized 600kg of rotten duck meat, which was meant for supply in Ernakulam and at Kalavoor in Alappuzha district. In an earlier incident, police had seized over 300kg rotten chicken meat from a stall in Kaloor market.

But food safety department officials expressed their inability to conduct frequent raids due to shortage of staff and vehicles. “It is not possible for us to carry out checking regularly. Coordinated efforts of various agencies are required to keep a check on it. Many a time we are kept in the dark when local bodies and police conduct raids,” said a food safety official.

Ice for fish used to make juice; restaurants closed in India

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Food Safety officials on Sunday closed down three juice shops and a hotel in Kowdiar for unclean conditions and for serving stale food and beverages.

According to the officials, old fruits and ice blocks used earlier for preserving fish were used for making juice.

fish.on.ice“The fridges and freezers were found to be unclean. The fruits which were many days old had fungus on them. At the hotel, we found rats running around in the kitchen. Also, it did not have proper arrangements for waste disposal,” said an official.

On Saturday evening, an illegal slaughter house in Kunchalumoodu was raided and locked down following reports of veal beef being sold off as mutton. 

9 food business operators lose licenses, 233 suspended in Indian state

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Pune has cancelled the licenses of nine food business operators and suspended those of 233 others in Pune in the last financial year for dispensing unsafe and substandard food items violating provisions of the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.

pune.india.food“The aim is to ensure that food articles dispensed by the food business operators conform to standards of safety, hygiene and quality. We are stringently enforcing food safety regulations across the state. In Pune, our officials inspected about 8,000 food business establishments between April 2013 and March 2014. Nine licenses were cancelled and 233 were suspended,” said Shashikant Kekare, joint commissioner (food), FDA, Pune.

The new licensing regime was initiated on August 5, 2011, when the Food Safety and Standards Act came into force. The act aims at bringing the food industry under one umbrella by scrapping all old licenses. The food industry needs to be regulated in order to ensure food safety.

Food businesses include hotels, restaurants, owners of small food stalls, dhabas, milk suppliers, fish stall owners, fruit and vegetable vendors, manufacturers, hawkers, small scale industrialists, fair price shop owners, self-help groups among others.

Srinagar’s Tao Café closed in India for selling ‘sub-standard and unhygienic’ food

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The Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) Saturday raided Tao Café, one of the oldest restaurants in Lal Chowk, and seized substandard eating and cooking material from its premises.

tao-cafeThe health officer of SMC, Shaqat Ahmad Khan, said an SMC team along with food safety officers and sub divisional police officer (SDPO) of Kothi Bagh raided the restaurant which is a famous hangout place among many people in Srinagar, after receiving a complaint from three persons, who had fallen ill after consuming food from the restaurant.

“We recovered five kilograms of stale fish, 10 kilograms of meat, stale chicken, five litres of used oil which was totally black in colour, stale noodles and low grade plastic and aluminium utensils,” he said. 

Operation Hot Water: Hotels in India upset over hygiene raids

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The special ‘Operation Hot Water’ drive launched by the Ernakulam district panchayat  and  the health department against eateries and other food outlets has angered the Kerala Hotel and Restaurant Association (KHRA)  which feels they are overstepping their duties.

KHRA state general secretary , Jose Mohan warned  the association would strongly protest the closure of hotels by the civic authorities and the health department, adding, Operation Hot water“They have no legal right to inspect the quality of food served take samples or seize stale food. They can only check the general hygiene of eateries. Going by the provisions of the Food Safety Act, only a qualified food analyst can collect food samples.”

District panchayat president  Eldhose Kunnappally, however justified the drive, saying that Operation Hot Water was essential to curb the possible outbreak of water-borne diseases. “Though the Food Safety Authority alone has the right to check the quality of food served, civic bodies can inspect the sanitation in eateries. … During the raid we found  many hotels and bars e functioning in very poor hygiene conditions.”

450 kids sickened from excess food color in cake in India

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A month after 450 children from the Kurla-based Anjuman Noorul Urdu High School fell ill due to food poisoning in their midday meal, the India Food and Drug Administration (FDA) report indicates that the quantity of food color used in the cakes was extremely high.

FDA officials said that the food color used was over four times higher than the permissible limits. “The yellow food color, also known as Tartrazine, was found beyond permissible limits in the seized cake samples. While the permissible limit allowed for human cake.colorconsumption is 100 parts per million (ppm), the lab results stated that the cakes had food colour exceeding up to 438 ppm,” said Suresh Annapure, joint commissioner (food), FDA.

Tartrazine belongs to a family of artificial azo dyes and is known to cause allergic and intolerance reactions, especially in asthmatics. Excess consumption of Tartrazine induces anxiety, migraine, depression, blurred vision, itching, general weakness, heatwaves and suffocation. The FDA will now prosecute Parivartan Sansthan, the midday meal contractor of the school and the owner of Alfala bakery. 

Don’t pick nose and get finger out of ear; top food safety tips for Indian street food vendors

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The millions of food vendors peddling tasty morsels from roadside stalls and rickshaws across India have long been an emblem of the country’s boisterous, chaotic spirit.

But now, Indian officials have a stern message for these often-unregulated roadside chefs: Wash your hands after using the toilet. get.that.finger.out.of.your.ear.airplaneDon’t sneeze into the food. And, above all, please don’t pick your nose.

Launched by India’s Food Safety and Standards Authority and the National Association of Street Vendors of India, the seminar offered a primer on safe drinking water and disposable gloves, along with a list of food-handling do’s and don’ts.

Number one on the forbidden list? Don’t pick your nose. Also banned are cleaning one’s ears, smoking while handling food and spitting into the wash basin or sink.

The goal of the program is to create “safe zones” in popular areas, but is it really possible to sanitize street food in India, where suspending any fastidious concern for hygiene has always been part of the deal?

Teachers run away after 21 kids die from poisoned lunches at Indian school

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The N.Y. Times reports that 21 children died and more than two dozen were hospitalized Tuesday after being poisoned by an insecticide-laced lunch served at a primary school in the eastern state of Bihar.

The children complained that the food — rice, beans and potato curry — tasted odd and soon suffered severe vomiting and diarrhea, officials said. india.children.die.jul.13After the children’s complaints, the school’s cook tasted the meal and promptly fell ill as well, according to P. K. Shahi, minister of human resource development in Bihar.

School meal programs in India, like many government programs, are rife with fraud. Corruption has long been endemic in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states.

After seeing the children get sick, the school’s teachers and administrators fled the school, according to Dr. Shambhu Nath Singh, the deputy superintendent of the government hospital in Bihar’s Saran District. Parents brought the sickened children to the hospital. Seven were dead on arrival and seven died soon after getting to the hospital, Dr. Singh said.

The local police opened an investigation into the incident and have been searching for the school’s headmistress, but she has fled, Abhijit Sinha, the district’s chief civil servant, said by telephone.