Alarm over unsafe food as Ramadan approaches
Food safety an issue for Ramadan in Bangladesh
Health officials say incidents of liver and other ailments rise sharply during Ramadan because of illegal chemical additives to food
- ucanews.com reporter, Dhaka
- Bangladesh
- July 18, 2012
Alarmed by the ever-growing prevalence of food adulteration, activists are urging the government to introduce stricter laws and crack down on illegal and dangerous food industry practices.
“Some dishonest businesses are consistently adulterating fish, meat, milk, honey, baby food, fruit and vegetables,” said Dr. Selima Rahman, executive director of the human rights organization RDRS, referring to the practice of adding chemicals to street food to keep them fresh.
“These unethical activities have gone too far now. They are exposing the public’s health, especially children's health, to great risks.”
Dr. Rahman was speaking yesterday at an awareness-raising event. Organized by RDRS and a group from Dhaka University, it was timed to coincide with next week’s start of Ramadan.
In this supremely important month in the Islamic calendar, Muslims fast through the day then feast with family and friends at night. It is a time when street vendors do a roaring trade and sales of sweets and savoury snacks soar, as do the accompanying health risks.
“In Ramadan we get double the number of liver patients,” said Dr. Fatema Sultana of the Liver Foundation Hospital. “So we encourage people not to buy oily food items from the street and to eat only home made food.”
Dr. Sultana added that she has seen a 10 percent growth in the number of patients with liver disease over the past five years. “We are convinced there is a strong connection between the disease and adulterated food,” she said.
One of Dr. Rahman’s RDRS colleagues also warned that the practice is not confined to mass manufacturers, as is commonly supposed, but takes place even at street level.
“In a survey, we took food from city markets and found that 71 percent of it was tainted with chemicals,” he said.
Some of the most widespread high-risk methods, which have grown rapidly in the past 10 years, include recycling low-grade cooking oil and spraying food with potentially lethal chemicals such as formalin, melamine and methanol, to keep it fresh for longer periods.
One trader at Kawran Bazar, a massive wholesale market in Dhaka, defended the practice of spraying his fruit with chemicals, saying “everyone else does the same.”
But Taher Jamil, deputy director of the State-run Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institute, insisted they are doing everything possible to stop the unlawful practices.
“We run two mobile courts regularly and during Ramadan it will be four,” he said. “If we find out about a case of food adulteration, we conduct a raid. Depending on the severity of the crime, we impose jail terms and monetary fines and we close down the offending establishment.” said Jamil.
He added that in the past year, the Institute has run 1,340 mobile courts, filed 1,557 cases, collected fines worth 30 million taka (US$ 365,854) and jailed 58 people for relevant offenses.
“Some dishonest businesses are consistently adulterating fish, meat, milk, honey, baby food, fruit and vegetables,” said Dr. Selima Rahman, executive director of the human rights organization RDRS, referring to the practice of adding chemicals to street food to keep them fresh.
“These unethical activities have gone too far now. They are exposing the public’s health, especially children's health, to great risks.”
Dr. Rahman was speaking yesterday at an awareness-raising event. Organized by RDRS and a group from Dhaka University, it was timed to coincide with next week’s start of Ramadan.
In this supremely important month in the Islamic calendar, Muslims fast through the day then feast with family and friends at night. It is a time when street vendors do a roaring trade and sales of sweets and savoury snacks soar, as do the accompanying health risks.
“In Ramadan we get double the number of liver patients,” said Dr. Fatema Sultana of the Liver Foundation Hospital. “So we encourage people not to buy oily food items from the street and to eat only home made food.”
Dr. Sultana added that she has seen a 10 percent growth in the number of patients with liver disease over the past five years. “We are convinced there is a strong connection between the disease and adulterated food,” she said.
One of Dr. Rahman’s RDRS colleagues also warned that the practice is not confined to mass manufacturers, as is commonly supposed, but takes place even at street level.
“In a survey, we took food from city markets and found that 71 percent of it was tainted with chemicals,” he said.
Some of the most widespread high-risk methods, which have grown rapidly in the past 10 years, include recycling low-grade cooking oil and spraying food with potentially lethal chemicals such as formalin, melamine and methanol, to keep it fresh for longer periods.
One trader at Kawran Bazar, a massive wholesale market in Dhaka, defended the practice of spraying his fruit with chemicals, saying “everyone else does the same.”
But Taher Jamil, deputy director of the State-run Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institute, insisted they are doing everything possible to stop the unlawful practices.
“We run two mobile courts regularly and during Ramadan it will be four,” he said. “If we find out about a case of food adulteration, we conduct a raid. Depending on the severity of the crime, we impose jail terms and monetary fines and we close down the offending establishment.” said Jamil.
He added that in the past year, the Institute has run 1,340 mobile courts, filed 1,557 cases, collected fines worth 30 million taka (US$ 365,854) and jailed 58 people for relevant offenses.
