Commerce minister Faruq Khan on Thursday asked people to eat less in order to avoid problems like adulteration and price hike of food.
Referring to his personal experience, the minister said that people did not die taking less food rather they ran less risk of consuming adulterated food.
The commerce minister was speaking at a discussion on 'Food adulteration: how to check it' organised by Voluntary Consumers Training and Awareness Society at the National
Press Club in the city.
He said the government was regularly monitoring the markets and carrying out drives to check adulteration of food.
About Taka 2 crore was realised in fines during anti-adulteration drives in the last two years, he said.
The ministry said that the present government had set up the national consumer rights protection directorate to protect their rights and implement consumer rights protection act.
Speaking at the discussion, Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry president AK Azad said local bazaar committees should take up the responsibility of preventing food adulteration.
Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research chairman SM Enamul Haque urged the media to intensify their campaign against food adulteration.
Presenting a paper on 'Food adulteration in the context of Bangladesh', Dhaka University biochemistry and molecular biology teacher Hossain Uddin Sarker said that nearly 45 million people suffer from food poisoning and food-borne diseases every year.
Referring to researches, he said popular iftar items like 'jilapi', 'beguni' and 'piaju' sold by roadside food shops and restaurants contained toxic colours.
Sarker also said that formalin was used on imported fish to make them look fresh, bananas had lost their taste as they were artificially ripened with carcinogenic chemicals, and 60 per cent of vegetables sold in Dhaka markets had toxic chemicals sprayed on them.
He said that during fiscal year 2010-11, Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institute had operated 1,251 mobile courts and 518 surveillance teams which fined 1,654 business organisations for adulterating food.
Presided over by VOCTA president Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the programme was addressed, among others, by Dhaka University Centre for Advance Science's chief scientist Latiful Bari, BRAC University teacher Turin Afroze, National Consumer Rights Protection Directorate's director general Abul Hossain Mia, DU pharmacy department dean ABM Faruq, Consumers Association of Bangladesh president Kazi Faruq and VOCTA executive director Khalilur Rahman Sajal.
Source : New Age
No comments:
Post a Comment