Adulterated Mustard Oil Invades Guwahati Market

Guwahati's food market presently is full of adulterated mustard oil brands, which flout every health safety measures.

Owing to usage of these adulterated brands of mustard oil, a number of people across the state have fallen sick.

It may be mentioned here that the previous Congress-led government in Assam had formed a certain guidelines to check the quality of mustard oil brands before they were released.

These guidelines came into effect in 2009 after a suspected case of food poisoning was reported from Barpeta and Nalbari.

The then Tarun Gogoi-led government in Assam, after the food poisoning incident, made it mandatory for any new mustard oil company first to send their oil sample to the state food safety commissioner's office. Once the commissioner's office gave the oil a green signal, it was released in the market only then.

However, it has been alleged that the Assam Health Department in April earlier this year, to support one Vanaspati Production Limited, cancelled the existing norms and allowed mustard oil brands to get released in the market without proper testing.

And today most of the brands available in the market do not meet the required safety measures and they are posing a threat to human life and health.

It is worth mentioning here that in 1998 Guwahati was inflicted with dropsy- which was suspected to have been caused by adulterated and unhealthy oil.