The Hindu Business Line : Concern over edible oil adulteration

ALTHOUGH considered an essential food product of mass consumption, edible oil has most often faced rampant adulteration. Cheaper or low priced substandard oil is mixed with premium oil and palmed off to unwary consumers.

Wide price differential among various oils creates opportunities for unscrupulous elements to cheat consumers.

Despite serious cases such as dropsy occurring in the past, not enough attention is being paid to the regulating sale of edible oil. Only a handful of States have implemented the edible oil packaging order. Going by anecdotal evidence, there is another catastrophe waiting to happen.

A new technique is doing the rounds in northern parts of the country whereby a cocktail of palm fatty acid distillate (a downstream product of palm oil processing meant for industrial application) and glycerine (a by-product in soap manufacturing) mixed with some (as yet unidentified) catalyst is adulterated with edible oil.

Such oil is believed to be widely sold in northern India including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana. Because edible oil is sold loose, poor consumers are short-changed with this potentially dangerous blend. This is a matter of serious concern that must shake up administration in all the States.

The use of palm stearine (the sold fraction received after fractionation of palm oil) with high melting point in vanaspati has been going for last three years or so because the policymakers are simply indifferent to the ground reality.

The Prevention of Food Adulteration Act, 1954 is a Central legislation; but implementation of the food law is the responsibility of State Governments.

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