The Food Safety Department has seized around 5,000 kg of stale fish in Ernakulam as on Thursday after truckloads of contaminated fish varieties reached here from other States over the past one week.
“We have destroyed an average of 5,000 kg of rotten fish brought in trucks coming from Tamil Nadu,” said Jacob Thomas, Assistant Commissioner of Food Safety, Ernakulam.
The vehicles had crossed the border check-posts before reaching various districts in the State. The trucks that arrived in Ernakulam seem to have crossed the Amaravila check-post in Thiruvananthapuram.
Food Safety officials pointed out that they did not carry out the usual tests using kits to ascertain the presence of formaldehyde and ammonia in the seized fish as the loads that arrived here were all found ‘rotten’. “We are also facing a shortage of rapid detection kits for formaldehyde and ammonia adulteration in fish developed by the Central Institute of Fisheries Technology owing to the lockdown. There is also an increase in demand for such kits after the number of fish adulteration cases spiked,” they said.
