The government is taking steps to strengthen the
laboratory facilities for checking for the presence of pesticides and
other heavy metals and lead, in all food items, including fruits and
vegetables across the State, Health Minister V.S. Sivakumar has said.
Inaugurating
the Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry machines installed in
Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam Government Analysis Labs (GAL) here on
Thursday, Mr. Sivakumar said that the GC-MS machine would be installed
at the GAL in Kozhikode.
A sum of Rs.1 crore had been
allocated for purchasing Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission
spectroscopy (ICP-AES) machines for detecting trace metals and arsenic
in food at the labs at Thiruvananthapuram and Ernakulam, he said.
Food
Safety offices were being set up in all 140 Assembly constituencies and
134 posts had been created towards the same. The GALs in
Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Ernakulam were completing the final
processes of securing NABL accreditation. The lab staff and scientists
in these institutions would be given training at the CFTRI lab at
Mysuru. He said that because of the stringent actions taken by the State
the entry of pesticide-ridden vegetables from other States had
decreased considerably.
Food Safety Commissioner T.V.
Anupama said that the results of pesticide tests on vegetables and
fruits would be available within three days.
Chief
Government Analyst S.T. Thankachan, Directorof Public Health Lab S.
Sunija, State Drugs Controller P. Hariprasad, and other senior officials
were present.
1 comment:
Nice Info Sir , Thanks for the valuable sharing , Food Safety Becoming more functional due to their Nature It self . This is an Growing field , and every one should develop some knowledge In int
Post a Comment