Believe it or not the Punjab Livestock and Dairy Development Department is yet to enact basic laws to check the quality of milk since the inception of Pakistan, resulting in awarding open-handed liberty to the packed and unpacked milk-sellers to play havoc with the lives of people.
India, which got independence with Pakistan made laws in this regard 30 years ago, but it is unbelievably regretful that Pakistan could not do anything except to promulgate Leno FND Act, 1965 for pure milk which even does not determine the number of bacterial germs to evaluate quality of milk.
To maintain the freshness of milk, some chemicals is being used in milk while oxytocine is used to enhance cow and buffalo capacity to give extra milk by unpacked milk-sellers posing great threats to the intakers, but ironically the said practice is unabated with impunity.
Apart from this, a packed milk needs to be pasteurised by boiling up on 72°C till 15 seconds and at once cooling on 10°C.
Furthermore, with a view to letting cream get absorbed into milk, it is homogenised. It is also sterilised and cooled at 13°C till 40 to 15 minutes to kill the milk-spoiling bacteria. Such milk can remain fresh till 72 hours. If the milk is boiled to 132 centigrade to one minute and then packed it can remain fresh until is opened.
But, a number of companies selling packed milk have been avoiding to follow the above-mentioned process as the authority concerned have let them loose to pack the milk unhygienically by not making specific laws.
It is pathetically pertinent to mention that law regarding the assessment of quality of milk, processing of milk, and labelling of packed milk to inform the customer the ingredient is missing for the long time.