"MILKING" THE CONSUMER BY THE MILKER! A UNIQUE INDIAN TRAIT!

Are you a regular milk consumer? Of course who does not consume milk in one form or the other as a part of the daily diet, especially in a country like India where more than 75% of the population is vegetarian by birth or economic compulsions. It was not long ago that milk distribution was in the hands of the so called dairy farmers who supply liquid milk to each and every house-hold. As these milk suppliers are small, owning 1-12 cattle, their reach is also limited to a few house-holds near their area of dwelling. Many senior citizens of to day might not have forgotten the olden days when they were young, the very familiar sight of a cow or buffalo coming to their houses early morning, milking being done in front of them so that no water is added by the supplier and enjoying the taste of fresh milk. The Varghese Kurien-led white revolution ended this era with almost all urban families depending on factory processed pasteurized and packed milk delivered by milk agents with contract for distribution service from a central dairy.

It may be far from truth if one believes that the old milk supply mode has completely disappeared to day. In fact in many small towns and suburban areas small dairy farmers are still thriving either because consumers have logistical problems in accessing to processed milk or there is inadequate supply of the product in their area. These consumers have to depend on "fresh" milk supply from the local dairy owners and the delivery mode is through cans and other vessels and bottles. One of the advantages here is that the milk from the unorganized sector is always cheaper to the extent of 20% compared to that of packed milk. Though India is considered the top notch nation among the milk producers world over, the extent of milk production that goes through the organized sector is still not very substantial, bulk of it consumed locally without routing through the collection net work of organized dairy units.

Is it the economic reason the major consideration for the consumer to patronize local milk vendors or is there any other factor that weighs heavily in the minds of people to opt for local milk in preference to packed milk? It appears there is another important factor that drives people into the open arms of local milk vendors even in areas where packed milk is available. Many consumers walk to distant milk sources in order to buy "fresh" milk at any cost! This phenomenon is attributed to the "mindset" or the "obsession" of many consumers for freshly milked product which they think is much superior to pasteurized milk. It is a common India psyche that any food which is old is invariably inferior in taste and nutrition! There are many consumers to day who refuse to consume frozen foods because of the same belief. How far they are justified in nurturing such beliefs?

Pasteurization of milk is an innocuous science based process which neither destroys the freshness nor reduces the nutrition. Modern processes treat the fluid milk at high temperatures for a few seconds only and the heat input under a closed system is insufficient to affect the flavor or nutrients in any way. In fact this process improves the safety of milk dramatically by killing all disease causing microorganisms. It is conveniently forgotten by those proponents of fresh milk that when fresh milk is brought home it is subjected to "cooking" in a milk cooker for long time and they do not seem to be much bothered about its effect on flavor or nutrients by this extremely rigorous heating regime.

What about the quality of fresh milk supplied by the local vendors? If the food safety authority in India is to be believed more than 65% of milk vended loose are adulterated, mostly with water. But a significant proportion is also mixed with many injurious substances like urea, detergents, used oils etc putting the health of the consumer in jeopardy. It is a common knowledge that India is the pioneering country that perfected the "art" of counterfeiting animal milk using man made chemicals entirely, eliminating the need for a cow or a buffalo! What is perplexing is that unless such milk concoctions are analyzed in sophisticated laboratories, many consumers will never be able to find out truth. Those who separate cream every day for making butter and ghee can only find out whether the milk is pure or not. During the ghee making process, such milk samples yield voluminous residues which are more fluffy devoid of any flavor typically associated with pure milk.

If consumers are afraid of adulteration, it is advisable that milk is always purchased from organized dairy units, if accessible. To day pasteurized milk can be preserved for 48 hours if unopened under cooler conditions and sterilized milk with 6 months life can be very safe. With milk surplus being reported all over the country, it is imperative that the distribution net work of dairy processors is expanded with much more vigor so that it is accessible to every nook and corner of this country. The impetus for criminals to adulterate milk is provided by the less than dynamic management of hundreds of dairies in the country and uniformity of quality and conformation to national standards are invariably the casualty when it comes to products from some of the public dairies. But, in spite of all their inefficiencies, they still provide a bulwark against unsafe and dangerous milk duplicates being churned out by unscrupulous criminals masquerading as milk vendors!

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

MILK FROM LEATHER-A CHINESE "JUGGLERY"!

If there will ever be a "Nobel Price" for "food innovation" (read adulteration!), the contest for this award will be a close one between India and China! while Chinese adulterators have global reputation ( or notoriety?) Indians are satisfied with local "achievements". Probably international community might not bother about adulteration as long the tainted foods are not exported, poor citizens in countries with loose vigilance system with no teeth are the silent sufferers. The notorious "Melamine" milk from China exported to a number of countries last year brought the focus light on the "ingenuity" of Chinese fraudsters and some credit must go to the government there for taking drastic action of summarily executing two of the "culprits" found "responsible" for the crime. Look at India where adulteration of food seems to have become one of the "fundamental rights" of unscrupulous traders and business people as there are no deterrent mechanism to punish the guilty. Other wise how can one justify country-wide adulteration of milk, considered the most protective foods, especially for vegetarians with spurious ingredients like detergents, urea, animal fat etc with authorities least concerned about such incidences and the so called synthetic milk brings windfall profit for the perpetrators. There are hundreds of such instances of food adulteration through out the country with practically no one caught and punished for the heinous crime.

From China comes another innovation reported as "Leather Milk" made from leather proteins using ingenuity that must be admired! It was "discovered" recently, if one is to believe the official story, the dairy industry is making milk powder with no milk solids at all and earning windfall profits through their illegal activities. Leather scraps commonly available in slaughter houses contain collagen in plenty and when hydrolyzed they yield protein hydrolyzates with high nitrogen content. As milk is priced based on protein levels in China and since protein content is assessed through estimation of nitrogen, any substance, especially organic in nature containing nitrogenous material, when added to milk can boost the protein value and high protein values can bring high income to the milk "producers". If normal milk is diluted and then "fortified" with leather protein hydrolyzate (LPH) to bring up the protein level and get high prices, no one will be wiser to this fraud. Detecting qualitatively and quantitatively presence of LPH is not easy unless sophisticated laboratory facilities are used and the process can be time consuming. As collagen is a rich source of hydroxy proline, one may have to go for detecting the presence of this characteristic amino acid in suspected samples.

While small addition of LPH may not be unsafe to any serious extent, production of milk like preparations devoid of milk solids is a crime that deserves severest punishment. As milk flavors of high quality are available, LPH can be a base that can be formulated into 100% synthetic milk conforming to a few chemical specifications laid for genuine milk. It is not that concerned people were unaware of this deplorable practice because demand for slaughter house waste has been high in China obviously under the pretext that they are used in animal feed. LPH manufacture is a thriving business and its current cost is about $ 120 per ton whereas milk powder market commands more than $ 2000 per ton. Even if LPH is used for adulteration of normal milk at the minimum level, powder made from it can be as cheap as $ 500 per ton. Why such an obnoxious practice was allowed to be perpetuated till now is one of mysteries of Chinese style of governance. It is unfortunate that the milk powder such as the one produced by the fraudsters is consumed predominantly by children and one can imagine its consequences on the health and development of these kids. It is well known that chemicals like dichromates, sulfuric acid etc are routinely used to soften the leather during processing and these chemicals are still present in LPH which go into adulterated milk.

Why it should take so many years for the Chinese government to ban use of LPH to edible foods defies logic and the ban in 2009 can at best be termed as "better late than never". Whether the adulteration business has covert sanction of the government is a point that perplexes many impartial observers. In India one hopes that the technology for leather milk will not be smuggled from China for the benefit of local fellow adulterators as the climate in India may be more conducive to such practices.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com

FOOD "FRAUD"-THE ANCIENT "MENACE" STILL RAMPANT!

Food fraud is considered to have taken place when a premium food product is substituted by a cheap one or when the label declaration does not truly reflect the quality of product inside. In extreme versions of fraud, the lives of consumers can be at jeopardy due to the poisonous nature of the substitute or adulterant used. This is not an evil confined to any one country or region and ever since the advent of humans in this planet, food fraud has been in vogue, mostly for easy and quick economic gains. World-wide the economic dimension of food fraud is placed at $ 50 billion, though no one is sure about the accuracy of this figure. Probably the value could be for food frauds that take place in rich countries where fraudsters target high value foods for committing this crime.

While 7-10% of all foods are considered fraudulent in western countries the corresponding figure in India is any body's guess. GOI statistics claim that 15% of all samples "picked up" for testing are adulterated but the monitoring agencies at the state level do not have the wherewithal for testing more than a few hundred in a year in a country where 1.2 billion people live. A major difference in India is that fraudsters or "adulterators" do not spare any food for economic gains and are least bothered about the health risks posed by the foods they churn out. High value products like Cheese, Meat, Alcoholic beverages, Cod liver oil etc are favored targets in western countries while simple foods like puffed rice, cooking oils, sugar, coffee, tea, mustard, milk, ice cream, honey, spices, dals, vegetables, asafoetida, ghee and butter etc are frequently adulterated in India.

Monitoring frauds in foods is beset with insurmountable practical problems and ultimately the onus of avoiding such foods falls on the consumer. But how far the consumers in a semi-literate country like India can assume this responsibility remains to be seen. Added to this, the disorganized retailing where most commodities are sold loose (unpacked), consumer has no means of finding out whether they are really genuine. As the menace from this evil acts assumes alarming proportions, technological innovations in detecting such frauds are adding to the armory of the testing agencies which were not available earlier. NMR imaging, use of Radio Isotopes, genetic methods like polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and DNA finger printing are new tools that can detect adulteration in many foods though they cost heavily to procure, maintain and operate. May be it is too far fetched to imagine that the current dilapidated understaffed testing labs can ever be able to have such facilities under their roofs. FSSAI, the exalted agency with "authority" to punish fraudsters does not seem to be able to identify adequate culprits because of weak field level monitoring activities and insignificant number of food samples picked up in the market place for testing. Even in a few cases booked, the culprits live out the delays in the judicial system and come out unscathed!

Why pick on the poor FSSAI which any how has no expertise, experience or coherent thoughts on the subject, being a thorough bureaucratic organization when the much hyped FDA of the US or other similar agencies in Europe and developed countries are being hauled up for their "inefficiency" in combating the incidence of food frauds in their countries. Many food frauds have been documented in fruit juice, olive oil, spices, vinegar, wine, spirits and maple syrup, and seafood products. Victims range from the shopper at the local supermarket to multimillion companies of impeccable reputation. True, such deception has been happening since Roman times, though it is becoming the focus of attention now with more products imported under the free trade regime and a tight economy heightening competition. Interestingly organized food industry itself is becoming increasingly critical about the regulators blaming them for not doing enough to combat this social evil because the fraudsters are eating into their business.

Is there no way to face this "safety crisis"? While organized industry can exercise some self control with their brand value at stake, what about those millions of informal sector players in food processing who do not comer under the vigilance umbrella? "Hang them from the nearest pole" policy is easy to advocate but difficult to implement in any decent democratic society, though countries like China or Saudi Arabia may be able to make food fraudsters pay with their lives for the crimes committed by them. In India there is a feeling that punishments for food crimes are extremely small and further the distinction between willful and accidental adulteration in awarding punishment complicates the situation enabling most of the violators get away with a "rap on the knuckle", insufficient to be a deterrent. Compulsory registration of all food manufacturing activities, stringent monitoring of processing and retailed products, strengthening the infrastructure through several fold expansion and modernization, ban on loose vending of any foods, accelerated judicial system and product liability to compensate automatically to consumers affected by fraudulent foods are some of the minimum needs to respect the rights of the citizens to quality and safe foods.

V.H.POTTY
http://vhpotty.blogspot.com/
http://foodtechupdates.blogspot.com