The All-India Areca Growers’ Association, Puttur, has alleged that a lobby is working against arecanut and is constantly propagating that its consumption is harmful to health for the past two decades.
In view of the Union government reiterating in the Lok Sabha recently that concerns over arecanut being carcinogenic still prevailed, the president of the association, Manchi Srinivasa Achar, claimed in a release on Sunday that this lobby has been projecting arecanut in a bad light through different media, seminars, and also through “paid news”.
He said that no valid research has said that the consumption of arecanut is injurious to health.
A conference on “arecanut and human health”, conducted at the Central Plantation Crops Research Institute (CPCRI), Kasaragod, Kerala, recently had not passed any negative comments on arecanut. He said that some “unseen hands” are responsible for projecting the consumption of arecanut as dangerous to health. But arecanut has been in use as medicine for hundreds of years.
The government should first stop the import of inferior quality of arecanut to the country and its flooding in the domestic market.
Mr. Achar said that earlier some lobbies worked against coconut oil by propagating that its use increased the level of cholesterol.
This, Mr. Achar alleged, provided huge businesses to pharma companies.