Food Adulteration Awareness : A Powerful Weapon to Combat the Food Quality Contamination

Abstract

In India, food contamination has become a serious problem now-a-days. Consumer education and awareness is considered as the need of the hour. Adulteration like corruption has become rampant with alarming rate. The government knows that most of the spices, dal, ghee, milk sugar, tea etc are adulterated. The nature of contaminants is often impure, unhygienic, harmful, and detrimental to public health like adding the urea to milk, duplicate products often sold for the products of reputed brand, cold drinks like Pepsi, Coca cola etc and unhygienic substances, dal with stone bits, tea garnished by saw dust, turmeric mixed with chromate powder, chilly powder mixed with red colour and even fruits vegetables and cereals sold in market often having high level of toxic metals like lead, nickel, cadmium etc. Adulteration of food stuffs is commonly practised in India by traders due to consumers’ behaviour. They want to buy the food stuffs at lower price as possible as lower. The sellers now try to meet the needs of the buyers and their purchasing habit/tendency. This tendency of purchasing the stuffs motivates the sellers and traders to sell the adulterated food stuffs in the markets. Despite of ISI or Agmark certification mandatory for all edible items and food adulteration laws, food contamination has been rising at alarming rate especially in India. To encounter this ticklish situation, consumer awareness may play a vital role to combat the prevailing adulteration from a right perspective with the help of mass media and educational activities in school or colleges.