Campaign against food adulteration

Two important articles carried in the front and back pages on April 30 on the subject of fruit and vegetable adulteration in a local English daily terribly shocked me. This mindless and dangerous trend of poisoning fruit and vegetables with harmful chemicals must stop. It should be considered a national priority problem. To begin with the process should be punitive and needs to be carried out on a regular basis. The government should take up this matter in all seriousness.

Here is a proposal for a number of regular teams, consisting of BCSIR personnel and some police personnel to stand guard. They will regularly go round and check all the city vegetable markets one after another. Assuming that there are say, twenty such markets all over the city, the same market may be checked at every four to five weeks' intervals. All contaminated fruits vegetables etc. should be put on a truck for destruction away from localities.

The monitoring will be in a random manner so that sellers of such adulterated food materials do not have any prior information or idea.  If this punitive practice is regularly followed up, then possibly we may expect that the present range of contamination between 30 to 50 per cent, as stated in the report, may drop down hopefully to below 10 per cent, may be within twelve or eighteen months.

Quite possibly, this could lead to increase in retail price, say by  around 10 per cent! However this is bound to be lower in the overall healthcare and medication costs that will be incurred by people in the event they copnsume contaminated fruits and vegetables. We may begin with monitoring those fruits and vegetables that we take raw like banana, orange, lime, jamrul, jackfruit, cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, salad leaves, carrots and many more! Initial testing may start with these and similar fruits and vegetables, and more items may be included later!

Overall, the costs for carrying out the drive may come to Tk 1.5 million a month. The annual cost may possibly be around Tk 25 million. This should be incorporated in the next year's budget under the health sector. But the return on this investment can possibly exceed the amount in reducing the cost of free treatment offered by the public hospitals and the various public health care units that are set up all over Bangladesh! In that context, it will be nationally cost-effective!

The writer is an engineer, with some healthcare sector's background related to supply of          gases and medical equipment while serving in the erstwhile Bangladesh Oxygen Ltd sam@dhakacom.com