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Milk Contamination in India - The Ways and Reasons
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Wednesday, 16 January, 2019, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Ankita Kataria
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The Oxford dictionary defines the term contamination as “the action or state of making or being made impure by polluting or poisoning.”
India is the world’s largest milk producer and consumer in the world with the values amounting to 176.35 and 160 million tonne respectively for the year 2017-18. The annual demand for milk by 2022 is estimated to be 210-220 million metric tonne.
Ironically, about 68.4% of the milk in India was found to be contaminated by the country’s Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) in 2012. The states of West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand fared the worst with not a single sample passing the tests and all samples found to be contaminated with detergent.
Adulteration is more common in north India. New Delhi fared worse than most states, with as many as 70% of the samples tainted. The western state of Goa and southern state of Puducherry conformed to the standards, with no indication of adulteration in their milk.
One farmer from Bijnaur in the state of Uttar Pradesh had been quoted as saying: "We don't even know what we are drinking anymore. The milk the dairy farmers give to the collection centres in their respective villages is fair and good. But it is the greed of manufacturers, and because demand is so high, that they don't care about who drinks the milk and can add all these additives."
Methods - contamination
The methods for contamination are many but the ultimate motive is mostly monetary. Milk may be contaminated for (i) increasing volume using water; (ii) increasing thickness using starch, glucose and paint; (iii) preserving using formalin, detergent and hydrogen peroxide; (iv) increasing protein content using urea, melamine; (v) improving whiteness using bleach.
Apart from the intentional reasons, milk may also get contaminated microbially or due to unhygienic handling, feeding of cattle with pasture sprayed with pesticides and fertilisers or if they eat trash and toxic materials while roaming on the streets.
According to a report by the Animal Welfare Board in September 2018, about 68.7% of the milk production in the country, along with milk by-products was found to be laced with polluting ingredients. This issue is so grave that it has been discussed in Indian Parliament and by the Supreme Court.
Milk quality survey
But FSSAI cleared the air in November 2018 by stating in its interim report of the National Milk Quality Survey 2018 that only 10% of the milk is contaminated, and the prime reason behind this is poor quality of feed, irresponsible use of antibiotics and poor farm practices. The interim report has only considered liquid milk and did not include milk products. Of the total, about 41% (2,607) samples were for processed milk, while remaining 59% (3,825) were of raw milk.
The report showed that non-compliance on fat and solid-non-fat (SNF) quality parameters is higher in raw milk compared with processed milk.
Processed milk samples had a bigger share in the number of non-compliant samples as compared to the raw ones.
“This survey must make private industries adhere to the standards,” said Pawan Agarwal, CEO, FSSAI. The survey was conducted over a period of six months (between May and October 2018), and is the largest systematic survey of milk till now, both in terms of sample size (6,432 samples) and the parameters tested.
4 quality parameters
The food authority has considered four quality parameters, 12 adulterants and four contaminants – antibiotics residues, pesticides residues, Aflatoxin M1 and Ammonium Sulphate. “This report has been released as there was a lot of misinterpretation of information provided in the survey conducted in 2011,” Agarwal added.
In 2011, FSSAI did not include any parameters pertaining to contaminants and just focussed on quality rather than safety concerns. According to Agarwal, the new survey found that only 638 or 9.9% of the samples were adulterated. This survey included only liquid milk and milk products. Also, it did not cover the microbiological evaluation of all the samples.
The agency also claimed that among all the samples, less than 10% contained antibiotic, ammonium sulphate residues, aflatoxin and pesticides and only 12 were adulterated. He added, “There is no concern at all due to pesticide residues.” The latest survey gives the real picture of milk quality in India.
Above findings show that there is a lower risk of contamination but this does not prove that the milk being consumed meets all the quality standards. Thus quality concerns still linger as stated by the Consumer Guidance Society of India (CGSI). According to its report, 78% of the milk does not meet quality standards which basically includes the levels of fat and solids-not-fat.
Demand and supply gap
Since milk is consumed in everyday diets, contamination may become a grave concern since the contaminants can be highly hazardous and can cause irreversible damage to the body causing cancer, heart problems and in extreme cases, death. To fill the gap between the huge demand and supply, middlemen regularly add supplements to increase the thickness and viscosity of milk and preserve it for a longer while, forcing the customers to pay a higher price and risking their health.
Milk contamination can cause irreversible damage to the organs, devoiding us of the nutrients it has to offer. According to a recent advisory issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), if adulteration is not put to a stop, India's population would be suffering from serious and fatal diseases like cancer by the end of 2025.
Contamination can have highly hazardous impacts on the health of the people and the economy of the country. To give an example of contamination, an adulterated batch of bootleg liquor killed at least 125 drinkers in West Bengal in December, 2011. This situation may soon arise with the most sacred drink of India. The gravity of the issue is highly visible since the Supreme Court has ordered life imprisonment on anyone found contaminating milk.
New technologies
The Indian Parliament has also raised questions whether the new technologies are capable of detecting contaminated milk. The latest technologies are promising but are far behind solving the contamination problem in India. A new scanner is available that can detect adulteration in milk in just 40 seconds.
Another solution offered is the use of a GPS tracking system to track milk through the supply chain and detect if, when and where it has been tampered with in the future. There are also adulteration test kits available in the market today. Although a little pricey, these kits are helpful and easy to use. It has been suggested that such innovations reach the consumers at all levels from rural to urban societies. Thus, contamination in India can largely be controlled and reduced before it reaches a level of higher risk.
(The author is PhD scholar, food technology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana. She can be contacted at ankitakataria.ak92@gmail.com)
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