AMC raids sweet shops ahead of Rakshabandhan

AHMEDABAD: With multiple festivals including Rakshabandhan approaching, the AMC on Tuesday intensified food inspections and took samples of food ingridients from 33 shops. Most of these were sweet shops selling kaju katli, barfis, unbranded chocolates and sweet products made of mawa (thickened milk).
The results for these samples will be out in a week’s time.

Meanwhile, the tests reports for food samples collected from sweetmeat shops and restaurants between July and the first week of August were published by the civic body on Tuesday. AMC found that of the 20 restaurants and sweet shops, nearly 10 were using substandard food material which did not conform to food safety standards.

AMC health officials had collected some 150 samples of items such as butter, fryums, chutney, masala water for pani puri and dabeli masala from 20-odd shops. According to the medical officer of health (MOH) Bhavin Solanki, 24 of the 150 food samples collected from the 20 shops were unsafe for consumption. Most of these shops were in Navrangpura, Asarwa, Indrapuri, New Ranip, Meghaninagar, Jamalpur, Krishnanagar and Shahibaug.

“We had taken samples of pani puri and chutney and found four samples of these failed quality tests. In one case the potato mix was found to be substandard, while in other two cases it was the sweet chutney. In one case the spiced water used for pani puri was adulterated. These samples were collected from Usmanpura, Apna Bazaar, Lal Darwaja and Odhav and failed to meet the required standards.”