Ruthless adulteration of milk & food in Pakistan

THE FRONTIER POST

Ali Ashraf Khan

The reporters of a TV programme ‘Sareyaam’ aired on ARY News have raided few secret locations in the very late hours of night in interior of Punjab exposing the methods applied by dairy business people in the adulteration process of milk provided to multinational companies which have monopolized a major portion of the milk market in Pakistan. The programme was showing how poisonous ingredients including urea, vanaspati ghee and colour removing chemicals were mixed together to formulate a dangerous liquid, filled in packets and sold as milk. Multinational milk marketing companies procure milk from different vendors who have few cows and buffalos producing 15 to 20 liter per cattle of milk daily but supplying 100 times more ‘milk’ to the procurement agents daily causing health hazards of serious nature, which can be seen in increasing number of multiple disease as a slow poisoning of the nation. What actually is happening in every village from where milk is supplied to these big companies is what I learnt few year back from reliable people knowing this game that if some one has capacity of 100 liter of milk they mix it with 2000 liter of water, add 1 to 2 bags of urea and vanaspati ghee of a particular brand that is made from animal fat, when this is mixed together a yellow coloured fluid of 2100 liter is available in which they mix some chemical that is used in nail removers locally called ‘rangkat’ which can damage human body, that helps to turn this yellow liquid into white and is supplied as milk to be further processed, packed with brand name and marketed on a highly exorbitant price to poor consumers who have no other alternate or choice. No government functionary has ever bothered to test and analyze to find out milk purity and its ingredients. I remember distinctly an incident that occurred when a Chinese company supplied one most popular brand of infant milk in large quantity to the USA, there it was tested and found that the milk for infants supplied by China had in its ingredients melamine powder, which is harmful, so the entire consignment was returned back under protest. Back home in China a high powered inquiry was initiated against this company and I had seen on Chinese media that when it was found true and the supplier company admitted mixing melamine powder in the famous infant milk brand, the Chief Executive of this company was shot point blank no second appeal or inquiry. One thing is good in China that if corruption is proved the punishment for the corrupt is instant execution of death penalty. No plea bargain that rules the roost in eradication of corruption in Pakistan by National Accountability Bureau, a term that can easily be called corruption in itself. Why this is so, the simple answer is that there is no commitment of the leadership to wage serious war against corruption. Similar reports have been shown in the years before showing the adulteration of different food items including milk but so far nothing has been done or changed. FIRs have been registered but we still have to wait for a powerful constitutional investigation authority, free from executive control that can then expose culprits to be punished which would make an improvement in food production security possible. Food adulteration is not a new issue at all. Some of us may still remember a discussion in the late1970s about ice cream. When the multinational Walls started intruding into the Pakistani market, they bought over all their competitors including Polka and others, so as to monopolize and control prices. Their ice cream was made not of milk but from vegetable oil. A court case was launched by Yummy ice cream against Walls saying that according to Pakistani specification ice cream has to contain milk and not vegetable oil while the Lahore High Court acknowledged this reasoning and gave a verdict against Wall’s ice cream and the superior court also upheld this verdict. The strange but the verdict was never implemented during last few decades and until today Wall’s is selling its products in our country as ice cream. What else can be expected in a state that has used its authority not so much to improve the living conditions of its citizens but rather to suit the whims of its ruling elite. By now the state has undermined its institutions to such an extent that it is at the verge of collapse. That has not only to do with the security situation which is of comparatively recent making but with the missing respect of the nation for laws in this country and the incapability or unwillingness of the state to implement and enforce laws or any other decision which is surely closely related to the menace of corruption also. The adulteration of food items and especially of milk is harming the health of our population in general and of our children in particular. Drinking water is another area where free for all is going on. It was in 1980s that World Health Organization reports started that water supplied to Karachi city is contaminated and random samples were taken at different points of the supply pipeline Dhabeji to Karachi by the help of plasma mass spectrometer, which abundantly found not only bacteria but pipeline itself infected with germs that were causing jaundice; so multinational companies jumped into cash this situation to promote mineral water culture, bottled water use became so popular that everywhere in Pakistan people are buying expensive water instead of government supplying tap water, but soon it turned out that even this bottled water is not safe for drinking. There are reports in the USA that the plastic bottles used in ½ and 1 liter pack are highly injurious in extreme hot weather like Pakistan has, in the USA they have discouraged it but in Pakistan people carry these bottles more as a fashion. In late the 1990s my friend used to import container loads of bottled water from the UAE to be supplied to five-star hotels meaning that our bottling plants were not up to their standard of purity. Now in the ongoing melee drama multinational companies have perhaps outsourced procurement and supply in different areas, where private individuals are filling such water in their rented premises into bottles of known companies and are selling them to consumers, which is not properly purified under reverse osmosis system. Will somebody please take care of this fraud that is spreading kidney problems to people who are forced to drink water outside their homes while on work? We also know that adulteration in drugs, imported grocery items and vegetables infected with dangerous insecticide spray has made the lives of our population already difficult and the media have not exposed these because of their own vested interest in advertisement income from these companies responsible of promoting health hazards. That is even more serious in view of the fact that a large section of our population is deprived of health-care system. But apart from the detrimental influence on public health food, milk and water adulteration is further undermining the trust of the people in the state which is a sign of its failing and alternative models such as Islamic state will gain more popularity. Though one can doubt that all the pious Pakistanis who are busy in food adulteration under this government and then go to pilgrimage for a whitewash would stop doing so if not a strict control and evenly strict punishment is introduced by state and its institutions. There is right now a hype going on with regard to the new savior who recently landed in our country and who is using the craving of Pakistani people for a better life for his career promotion. He had been an MNA under Musharraf regime through 2002 elections, when flour (ata) was 6 rupees a kg which is now 41, milk was 18 now 100, daal masor 15 kg now 120, rice 20 kg now 120 and so on and no voice was ever raised against the WTO sponsored dark horses by Dr. Qadri. There is a fear that this bad situation in the country will enable him to create anarchy and destruction in the country that would suit nobody here but only people sitting outside the country.