Packaged milk producer Mother Dairy on Wednesday denied any claims of adulteration in its product, asserting that food safety was a priority of the company.
In a press conference on Tuesday, Mother Dairy reiterated that the samples collected by the Uttar Pradesh Food and Drug Administration were not tested.
The co-operative said the test was done on "loose milk samples collected at village level" which were yet to be accepted by it.
"The first test was conducted in Meerut by UP FDA and it found solid not fat (SNF) and there was no adulteration. We questioned SNF and sent the same samples for retesting to a lab in Kolkata, we are still awaiting the results," Mother Dairy Managing Director S Nagarajan told reporters in the national capital.
Mother Dairy said the milk sample, which the UP FDA claimed to find presence of detergent, was drawn even before reaching the chilling centre where the first level of testing happens to ascertain the quality of milk for further processing.
"It is unfortunate that loose milk samples collected at village level which are yet to be accepted for processing at our factory has been attributed to Mother Dairy brand," he said, adding its milk was "safe for consumption".
Nagarajan said Mother Dairy has not yet got any official report of the tests from the UP FDA and was awaiting for details on the same.
He said Mother Dairy would take up the issue with central food safety regulator FSSAI.
Mother Dairy said that it under goes four levels of testing at input, processing, dispatches and even at the market level.
"Only after securing clearances from all quality measures, the milk is then accepted for processing and re-examined after processing, thus ensuring the product available is safe for consumption," Nagarajan said.
The clarification from the company came after UP FDA claimed to have found detergent in one of the samples of milk from Mother Dairy's collection centre in Agra. The state body had also claimed to have found refined oil in another sample of the product. The samples were reportedly collected in December 2014.
Following the claims, the Food and Drug department had cancelled licence of the collection centre and an FIR was registered.
"Results showed that the samples were sub-standard and one of the two contained detergent," UP FDA official Ram Naresh Yadav had said.
"The samples were first sent to Lucknow and later to Kolkata on the demand of the company," Yadav had further said.
The company had earlier also categorically denied any adulteration of milk it supplies in pouches. Sandeep Ghosh, the head of Milk, Fruits and Vegetables Section at Mother Dairy in Delhi, said, "Mother Dairy milk undergoes four levels of thorough testing at various levels -- input, processing, dispatches and even at market level."
Every tanker of milk reaching at plants passes a series of 23 stringent quality tests to check any deviation from defined parameters. These tests assist in detecting contamination of milk through water, urea, detergent, oil, etc, he said.
"For any such adulteration, the milk is immediately rejected from further action," he added. The organisation follows 100% testing protocol rather than resorting to random testing procedures, Ghosh said.
Mother Dairy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Dairy Development Board.
(With PTI Inputs)
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