Experts ask for urgent funds to set up scientific labs
Friday, 7 November 2008
Experts Thursday requested the government to allocate sufficient funds on an urgent basis to develop state of the art testing labs in the country to check adulteration of food items, especially baby foods, reports BSS.
"The recent experience from fake drugs and melamine contamination in baby milk has heightened public health concerns in Bangladesh, where testing labs are neither adequately developed nor internationally accredited," chairman of Bangladesh Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR) Dr M Akram Hossain said while addressing a seminar at the council auditorium in the city Thursday.
The seminar was organised to disseminate the effectiveness of LC-MS/MS machines, one of the latest methods being used to detect and quantify the level of contamination in food items.
The BCSIR has also applied the method to test the eight brands of formula milk temporarily seized by the government to detect melamine contamination.
Dr Akram said the controversies over milk contamination could have been solved much earlier provided the local labs were adequately equipped. He, however, said steps are underway to improve capacity and equip local labs with new machines to detect contamination with high precision.
The scientific testing labs in the country became the focal point of discussions after a number of food and drug items were detected fake or contaminated in recent times.
The presence of toxic melamine in Chinese baby milk has triggered the discussions as reports from different agencies mismatched each other on the issue.
The Dhaka University Chemistry department tested eight brands of powdered baby milk through HPLC method and found all of those tainted with melamine beyond tolerable limit. Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI) had detected three Chinese brands with high concentration of melamine under GCMS method.
"The recent experience from fake drugs and melamine contamination in baby milk has heightened public health concerns in Bangladesh, where testing labs are neither adequately developed nor internationally accredited," chairman of Bangladesh Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR) Dr M Akram Hossain said while addressing a seminar at the council auditorium in the city Thursday.
The seminar was organised to disseminate the effectiveness of LC-MS/MS machines, one of the latest methods being used to detect and quantify the level of contamination in food items.
The BCSIR has also applied the method to test the eight brands of formula milk temporarily seized by the government to detect melamine contamination.
Dr Akram said the controversies over milk contamination could have been solved much earlier provided the local labs were adequately equipped. He, however, said steps are underway to improve capacity and equip local labs with new machines to detect contamination with high precision.
The scientific testing labs in the country became the focal point of discussions after a number of food and drug items were detected fake or contaminated in recent times.
The presence of toxic melamine in Chinese baby milk has triggered the discussions as reports from different agencies mismatched each other on the issue.
The Dhaka University Chemistry department tested eight brands of powdered baby milk through HPLC method and found all of those tainted with melamine beyond tolerable limit. Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI) had detected three Chinese brands with high concentration of melamine under GCMS method.