Faking foils all moves

A citizen of Bangladesh went to Paschim Banga (West Bengal) in India. He was staying in his relative's house there. Once he needed to go to a grocery shop to buy some mustard oil. He asked the shopkeeper whether the oil was pure or not. The shopkeeper just wondered and straight asked him whether he was from Bangladesh. Getting an affirmative reply, the grocer told the customer that not only the edible oil, no other adulterated foods are sold in West Bengal.  
But unfortunately, the scenario is different in our country. More than 76 per cent of food items in the Dhaka city markets were found adulterated in a random survey conducted by the relevant section of Dhaka City Corporation a few years back.
If this be the situation in the capital city, then we can imagine how alarming it is in the districts, upazilas, unions and other places.
The situation arises like this as the authorities concerned cannot perform their duties properly reportedly due to their manpower shortages and other reasons. Most of the fruits, fishes, meat and even vegetables sold in the markets are contaminated with formalin, a dangerous chemical which may cause various types of deadly diseases.
Different bakery items and sweetmeats are prepared with various toxic colours that are generally used as textile dyes. Consumption of these dyes can cause indigestions, allergies, asthma, cancer and other health problems.
Moreover, poisonous DDT powder is used in processing dry fish, which can also cause cancer besides other heath problems. Most of the manufacturers use urea fertiliser in producing 'murhi' (puffed rice) to make it attractive.
Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI), the only government organisation for product certification, approves all foodstuffs for marking and retests any item if submitted for doing so. The BSTI should examine any product with minimum fee when anyone lodges a complaint about any food item.
The companies submit to the BSTI the sample of the food items they want to market. Definitely, they submit samples with standard quality. But it is seldom monitored time to time to make it sure that the companies always market their products maintaining the quality. As a result, consumers have no option but to buy and eat the adulterated foods with harmful and low-quality ingredients.
To check such malpractices mobile courts should be conducted in all factories every now and then to make it sure that they are producing goods maintaining required quality and hygiene.
Amid growing concerns expressed by the consumers, experts and consumer rights groups about the food adulteration, the cabinet had approved a new law in 2013 with a provision of seven year's jail term to tackle the problem.
The original draft of the law suggested death penalty for food crimes which could cause loss of life, but it was scaled down for 14 years.
It seems that adulterators are not afraid of committing the crime as punishment is only seven years jail. If there is provision of capital punishment to the food adulterators, then no one would dare to use deadly chemical like formalin in foods tuffs.
The Jatiya Sangsad (parliament) passed the Food Safety Act 2013 on October 10, 2013 in order to make provisions for the establishment of an efficient and effective authority. The low empowered the concerned organization to regulate, through coordination, the activities relating to food production, import, processing, stockpiling, supplying, marketing and sale in order to ensure safe food for the countrymen through appropriate application of scientific processes and state-of-the-art technology.
In order to meet the aspirations of the citizens of the country the government also established the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority on February 02, 2015.
As per the organogram the Food Safety Authority will support all the food-control agencies, food-business operators and countrymen towards the goal of establishing a modern food-safety system in Bangladesh.
Most of the advertisements aired on TV channels contain untrue information to some extent. Thus, consumers are easily deceived as they think that there is nothing wrong in the advertisement. Actually, there is a big difference between the claim and the benefit.
Such concerns prompted the Indian food regulator, the Food Safety Standards Authority of India, to send notices to 38 companies for misleading advertisements.
Heinz's popular product Complan faces prosecution for claiming the product helps children grow twice as tall as they would if they had any other drink. Boost and Horlicks from the GSK stable claim their products provide more stamina and make children smarter. Kellogg's claims on the slimming qualities of their product have also been questioned.
Pran is a big company in Bangladesh. It sold juice prepared from pumpkin labeling that as mango juice just adding mango flavour with it. The company stopped the marketing of this product after siphoning off hundreds of thousands of taka from consumers' pockets when the court ordered a halt.
Akij Food and Beverage sells a mango juice-Frutika-claiming it preservative-free in its TV advertisement. Dhaka South City Corporation's food-inspection department sent it to Dhaka Safe Food Court for examination. When tested, it was found out that harmful preservatives were used in Frutika mango juice in much higher quantities than acceptable level, which may cause cancer if consumed. The court fined the owner of the company.
Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA) should start functioning as soon as possible as food adulteration has crossed an alarming level long ago. If culprits are not given exemplary punishment, it would not be possible to save the countrymen from the menace of food adulteration.  
The BFSA should be equipped with competent and  honest persons. Otherwise, it would not be possible to rein in the malpractice. Magistrate Rokonod Dowla can be made chief of the inspection department as he braved a tremendous job to punish the food adulterators on several occasions a few years back.
If the BFSA can do this job perfectly and food adulterators are punished, then countrymen will get rid of the menace. The authorities concerned  should engage mobile courts frequently to hand down punishments to culprits as chemical toxins are used almost regularly  in basic food items like rice, fish, fruits, vegetables, and sweetmeats, mostly as preservatives in much higher than permitted quantity. Entire food chain is threatened to be unsafe.
The writer is
Shift-in-Charge (news) of the FE. He can be reached at: [email protected]