The Kolkata Municipal Corporation's food safety department will run drives against adulterated, unhygienic and substandard food during the festival season, Ei Samay reports. Large numbers of food stalls spring up around the big gatherings at this time, and officials will check what is being sold.
A senior official of the department said many shops, stalls and eateries that appear for just a few days tend to sell poor-quality food, and people caught up in the festivities eat it without question. A senior doctor long associated with the corporation's health department said many people in Kolkata suffer stomach problems during or just after the festival as a result.
Food safety officers say the use of dangerous colours to make food look attractive rises at this time, as does the sale of stale and rotten food for extra profit. In the same season last year the department collected 3,363 food samples, more than 200 of which were substandard.
The report is by Debashis Das and Aishwarya Mitra.
Photo: Jorge Royan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Ei Samay
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