LAHORE: The Punjab Food Authority (PFA) during January 2024 shutdown 351 food points and penalized over 8,500 eateries with Rs86.569 million cumulative fines besides issuing warning notices for improvement to more than 31,700 Food Business Operators (FBOs).

PFA also lodged FIRs against 87 food outlets on account of adulteration, counterfeiting and deceiving in the respective police stations. This was revealed in the monthly performance report of PFA here on Saturday.

PFA Director General Muhammad Asim Javaid said that meat and food safety teams inspected over 77,500 food points including production units across the province to ensure the availability of healthy, safe and hygienic food to the people ‘From Farm to Fork.

He said that the dairy safety teams also examined the 12,000 milk shops and 32,670 milk supply vehicles to inspect the quality of milk. The authority tested 30.1 million litres of milk and disposed of 165,000 litres for having contamination and harmful chemicals, he added.

Further, he said that the authority issued more than 2,750 food licensees to new FBOs during the last month. Meanwhile, a total of 958 samples were also taken for detailed analysis during different raids in Punjab.

According to details, the teams discarded 30,000kg of unhygienic meat; 24,000kg of tainted spices; 18,000 litres of rancid oil; 5,000 litres of substandard drinking water; 10,000kg of fabricated butter and 3,000kg inferior-quality of snacks. Similarly, PFA had uprooted unhealthy vegetable crops by ploughing on 80 kanal lands during different operations last month.

Muhammad Asim further said that the use of prohibited and non-food grade ingredients in the preparation of products is a serious offence.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024