Dehradun: Every Year 24th December is observed as National Consumer Day with a specific theme in India. On this day the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 had received the assent of the president. The enactment of this Act is considered a historic milestone in the consumer movement in the country. This day provides an opportunity for individuals to highlight the importance of the consumer movement and the need to make every consumer more aware of their rights and responsibilities. This year the National Consumer Day is celebrated with the theme “New features of Consumer Protection Act, 2019″. MAATY Biodiversity Conservation & Societal Research Organization, Dehradun has organized one-day training Programme on “Food safety: Adulteration and its impact on health (Milk and Honey) on the occasion of “National Consumer Day”.
The organizers of this training Programme, Professor Dhyanendra Kumar (Patron and President of Maaty), Dr. Ved Prakash (Founder of Maaty) and Dr. Ankita Rajpoot (Co-founder of Maaty) has conducted this programme to create awareness among the peoples regarding the adulterants and its impact on human health. This training programme has focused upon why adulterants have been added in to food items specially milk, honey and ghee, what are its impacts and how adulterants can be identified inside any food sample with the help of certain techniques.
On this occasion, our key-speaker Mr. Vikas Singh (CEO, Vipkaid Farmer Producer Oraganisation) expert in milk and dairy industry, delivered a very elaborative and relevant talk on various aspects related to milk and honey adulteration. He provided a detailed virtual training for identification and quantification of adulterants like glucose, detergent, urea, domestic sugar, jaggery syrup and many other, in milk and honey, respectively. He described various quantitative, qualitative and laboratory techniques (tests) to check the quality of milk and honey. He also provided the genuine information about the laws and acts regarding food adulteration. He said that these laws should be more stringent and strictly enforced on culprits to control adulteration practices.
Dr. Malay Shukla (Assistant Professor, School of Forensic Science, National Forensic Sciences University, Gandhinagar, Gujrat) next speaker of today’s programme, also delivered very informative talk on “impacts of food adulteration on human health”. He told that these adulterants are added to enhance the shelf life, taste and appearance of food items which have very harmful impacts on human health. He also added that milk, honey and ghee adulteration practices are increasing in order to make more money by leading companies. He said that we should avoid the use of canned and genetically modified food (GMF) as these are not good for health. Rather using these kinds of food items, we should prefer traditional and indigenous food items.
The programme was concluded by presenting vote of thanks by Dr. Ankita Rajpoot (Co-founder of Maaty). She appreciated all the efforts of honorable patron Prof. Dhyanendra Kumar, key-speakers Mr. Vikas Singh and Dr. Malay Shukla and participants from various parts of country for joining with us and making this event a successful one.
This training Programme has been co-ordinated by Mr. Jokhan Sharma and moderated by Dr. Himani Badoni along with Dr. Sadhna Awasthi. All the team members of Maaty organization including Ms. Megha, Ms. Pratiksha, Ms. Anupriya, Ms. Shefali, Ms. Urvashi and Mr. Gaurav were present on this occasion.
