Key milk co-operatives, unions, producer companies and National Dairy Development Board on Tuesday met with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI)’s new chief Ashish Bahuguna to chart out future course of action for enhancing safety, milk and milk products quality, as well as strengthening consumer confidence in co-operative products.
Safe liquid milk T Nanda Kumar, Chairman, NDDB, said, “The co-operative milk federations and unions have reiterated their commitment to provide safe and good quality milk. Also all co-operatives have agreed to further strengthen sampling and testing systems to ensure milk sold in the market conforms to FSSAI standards.”
He said that the cooperative sector is the single largest producer of safe liquid milk in the organised sector, and is already complying with food safety standards.
He said additional investments have been committed to improve the cold chain as well strengthen testing laboratories. RS Sodhi, MD at Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (Amul), added, “We are now making efforts that testing is done up to the lowest level. We are ensuring that testing mechanism at the village co-operative society level is further strengthened by putting electronic machines to check for adulterants. Efforts have already been made to establish cold chain at the village levels itself so that milk is chilled within a reasonable time after milking at the village level.”
At the same time, milk co-operative industry also raised concerns with FSSAI regarding instances where samples of raw or unprocessed milk were taken and were declared as property of the brand and the results were publicised. The federations have urged the food safety regulator that the sampling and testing methods should prescribe that the samples taken by local authorities are shared with the processor and opportunity be given to them for getting it retested in an accredited lab.
Testing, sampling S Nagarajan, MD at Mother Dairy added, “We will need to partner with the food safety authorities to ensure testing and sampling and reporting processes are further streamlined. There are issues around testing and sampling processes… that is an area, where we need to work to improve and ensure that testing mechanisms are all the same .We do recognise that when you test in different labs there can be different test results…the process can get cumbersome.”