WITH increasing awareness about the clandestine presence of synthetic milk in the country, many district administrations have been forced to spruce up their checking mechanism to prevent the entry or sale of adulterated milk.
The lead was provided by the district magistrate of Alwar in Rajasthan who came down heavily upon milk adulterators and put in place a strong system of checking through food testers and inspectors. However, with clinical testing still an expensive proposition, it is likely that a sizeable amount of synthetic milk is still flowing into the milk hubs of different states.
This has forced the organised sector to take up the issue seriously. Mother Dairy in Delhi (which buys a large amount of its milk from Punjab) has resorted to technology. It has introduced a state-of-the-art Dutro-Matic test which determines the presence of foreign fat and elements in milk from the refractive index after passing light through milk. This system is gradually being introduced in other states too, including Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. Another test which is becoming popular in the large organ-ised dairies is Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC), in which the presence of foreign elements is traced by creating an extremely thin layer of milk in the laboratories.
Some states, who have not gone in for hi-tech tests, are making do with mass campaigns. The Punjab Health Department has decided to launch a campaign against the manufacture of synthetic milk and has stepped up sample testing from an average of 319 samples a month to over 3,000 samples. This has primarily stemmed from the plea of milk dealers that there is no apparatus available with them to detect the presence of adulterants in the milk they buy.
