70% of milk samples failed to conform to standards

New Delhi: Beware,your daily glass of good health could actually be doing you harm.As much as 70% of milk samples picked up from the capital by a government agency failed to conform to standards.

Of the 71 samples randomly taken from Delhi for testing by the Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI),50 were found to be contaminated with glucose and skim milk powder SMP),which is usually added to milk in the lean season to enhance volumes.

Elsewhere in the 33 states and UTs study,milk was found adulterated with detergent,fat and even urea,besides the age-old dilution with water.Across the country,68.4% of the samples were found contaminated.

Only in Goa and Puducherry did 100% of the samples tested conform to required standards.At the other end were West Bengal,Bihar,Chhattisgarh,Jharkhand,Orissa and Mizoram,where not a single sample tested met the norms.

Other prominent states fared just a shade better.Around 89% of the samples tested from Gujarat,83% from Jammu & Kashmir,81% from Punjab,76% from Rajasthan,70% from Delhi and Haryana and 65% from Maharashtra failed the test.Around half of the samples from Madhya Pradesh (48%) also met a similar fate.

States with comparatively better results included Kerala where 28% of samples did not conform to the FSSAI standards,Karnataka (22%),Tamil Nadu (12%) and Andhra Pradesh (6.7%).

The samples were collected randomly and analysed from 33 states totaling a sample size of 1,791.Just 31.5% of the samples tested (565) conformed to the FSSAI standards while the rest 1,226 (68.4%) failed the test.

Sandhya Kaushik