The Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA) collected fines of Tk 20 lakh 50 thousand and filed 16 cases in drives over one week to protect public health and ensure safe food.

The authority gave the information in a press release on Sunday, 30 August.

The release said the BFSA is continuing its nationwide enforcement of the Safe Food Act, 2013, along with monitoring, public awareness and other work to protect public health and ensure safe food.

As part of this, from 23 to 29 August, drives in Dhaka and various districts and summary trials led by pure food court judges and metropolitan magistrates resulted in fines totalling Tk 20 lakh 50 thousand against 16 establishments and 16 cases being filed.

In the Dhaka metropolitan area, five establishments were raided under the Safe Food Act. Two were fined Tk 2 lakh and two cases were filed for offences including operating without mandatory registration, selling rotten and stale food and failing to display a trade licence.

Drives are also under way in districts across the country. In the same week, mobile courts were run at 12 establishments in Tangail, Faridpur, Madaripur, Cumilla, Cox's Bazar, Feni, Chattogram, Mymensingh, Panchagarh and Sylhet districts. For using unapproved colours, missing labels on products, storing or selling expired goods, producing food in dirty and unhygienic conditions and using burnt oil, the 12 establishments were fined a total of Tk 16 lakh 50 thousand and 13 cases were filed.

On 26 August, in summary trials in Chatmohar and Sadar upazilas of Pabna led by a pure food court judge and metropolitan magistrate, with Pabna's safe food officer present, legal action was taken against two establishments. For producing unregistered cheese and breaking hygiene rules, one was fined Tk 2 lakh under the Safe Food Act and a regular case was filed against the other.

Alongside enforcement, monitoring of food establishments has been stepped up across the country. In this period 264 food establishments were monitored, including markets, hotels and restaurants, bakeries, sweet shops, and food producers and processors. The monitoring checks that safe food rules are followed in production, storage, serving, processing and marketing, and instructions and legal action are given as needed.

The BFSA is also running a wide range of publicity to raise public awareness of safe food, covering eating safe food, hygienic production and marketing, and what consumers should do.

In this period a 14-minute TV commercial was broadcast on Bangladesh Television along with 42 scrolling messages, and three separate safe food messages ran for 35 minutes on Bangladesh Betar. Awareness messages are also posted regularly on social media through images, reels and videos.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.