LAHORE: The Punjab Food Authority (PFA) has stopped the production of 13 ice factories and imposed hefty fines on 371 units besides issuing warning notices for improvement to 405 others.

Meanwhile, food safety teams have discarded 24,000kg of substandard and unhygienic ice blocks during the ice factories checking campaign across Punjab here on Saturday.

PFA Director General Shoaib Khan Jadoon has led the operation in the provincial metropolis and held a zoom meeting on the ongoing campaign to take the briefing from the officers of the other districts of Punjab.

He said that PFA watchdogs visited 944 ice factories in Punjab including 116 in Lahore division, 103 in Multan, 145 in Muzaffargarh, 125 in Gujranwala, 180 in Sargodha, 43 in Rawalpindi, 152 in Faisalabad and 80 ice factories in Sahiwal.

Jadoon said that PFA stopped the production of 13 ice factories till further orders by imposing emergency prohibition orders. He said that EPOs were imposed for producing ice with unfiltered water, not installing RO Plants and using rusty ice moulds. Apart from that, the raiding teams had witnessed the worst condition of hygiene while visiting the ice factories.

He said that the use of ice made from unfiltered and polluted water in beverages causes stomach and digestive disorders for consumers. PFA has escalated its operations activities against substandard ice factories and water filtration plants in the wake of rising cases of Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD), he added.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022