Ghaziabad: More than 50 food safety officers from 18 districts carried out surprise inspections across 40 sweet shops, restaurants, hotels, dhabas and manufacturing units in the city on Friday as part of a coordinated pre-Diwali crackdown on food adulteration. The food safety and drug administration (FSDA) has intensified checks to detect prohibited synthetic dyes and other adulterants, particularly in festive food items whose appearance may have been enhanced using banned colouring agents.Officials said this was the first time teams from one district had been sent to another as part of such a coordinated inspection campaign. The inspection teams collected samples, checked manufacturing and expiry records, and examined hygiene and food preparation practices at these 40 places. Notices were also issued to several establishments.“Special attention is being given to food colours this Diwali. Sweets, spices and packaged mixtures often look brighter because banned food colour dyes may have been added to them. Our focus this time is on identifying such colours and ensuring that food products being sold to consumers meet safety standards,” food safety officer (Ghaziabad) Suresh Mishra said.Ahead of the festive season, the department found several food samples to be substandard, unsafe or misbranded in its latest testing report. The samples, collected before Sept 26, included sweets, non-milk products, spices and namkeen. UP has also issued guidelines warning food businesses against prohibited industrial dyes such as Rhodamine B, Metanil Yellow and Sudan dyes that can affect liver and kidney functions and can be carcinogenic too.Three teams from the FSDA headquarters in Lucknow also began inspections in Ghaziabad on Friday. Teams came down from Meerut, Muzaffarnagar and other districts also.All teams have been directed to submit detailed reports to the Lucknow headquarters. Further action against establishments will depend on sample results and violations detected during the inspections.
