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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JPR who wrote (9952)	12/8/1999 7:16:00 AM
From: JPR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Harmful edible oil dawn.com Next time you pick up a Pakistani-made-pickle, You wonder what that oil is. Remember deaths from RapeSeed Oil use STERN action taken this week by the Sindh government against ten factories which were involved in the production of substandard ghee and cooking oil is a step in the right direction. As things stand, the bulk of the raw material that goes into the manufacture of ghee and cooking oil is imported. For this reason, ghee prices have risen over the years because of the declining value of the rupee against the dollar. While the major ghee and cooking oil manufacturers have kept to their strict standards and taken the decision to raise prices accordingly, some unscrupulous manufacturers have taken advantage of the situation by introducing substandard and harmful additives in their products or by not adhering to the proper refining requirements and product standards in a bid to save money and keep the prices of their products relatively low and attractive to the average customers. This can have disastrous consequences. Ghee is a popular cooking medium but if harmful additives are used, as is done by some factories, this can even endanger the health and lives of the people who consume foods prepared with substandard oil. In some cases the full effects of the harm may not become visible for quite some time, making it difficult to trace any crippling effect or disorder to its real cause. Keeping this in mind, it is imperative that the food department, through its inspectors, conducts regular checks on the quality of ghee and cooking oil sold in the markets. Shops that are guilty of selling substandard products along with the factories that have manufactured these should be given exemplary punishment as such activity can only be checked through harsh punishment for the perpetrators of such crimes. At the same time, the food department should launch a drive to get all ghee and cooking oil manufacturing factories registered with the Pakistan Standards Institute as a first step towards maintaining the required standards of edible items. The longer the food department ignores its responsibility in the matter, the greater will be the risks to people's health and well-being from this and other categories of edible items.