The city Corporation’s seizure of large quantities of allegedly formalin-laced fish and a conflicting report from the Government Analyst’s Laboratory has snowballed into a tiff between the civic body and the Food Safety Department. The Corporation’s eagle eye special squad had seized nearly 2.5 tonnes of Threadfin bream (Kilimeen) from Pattom around 3 a.m on Thursday, while the fish-laden truck was on its way to the Pangode fish market.
The health officials detected the presence of formalin using rapid detection kits developed by the Central Institute of Fisheries Technology. The agents were slapped with a fine of ₹25,000. But, late on Thursday evening, the result from the Food Safety Department indicated that the test for formalin was negative. Corporation Mayor K.Sreekumar has now questioned this test result, accusing some officials of the Food Safety Department of having an unholy nexus with the lobby transporting formalin-laced fish to Kerala.
In a statement issued here on Friday, he said that the two people who accompanied the vehicle were convinced by the Corporation’s test result. They also paid the fine without any complaints, after realising their mistake. The Corporation had called in the Food Safety Department officials to carry out confirmatory tests in the laboratory.
“However, they did not even follow the guidelines in the collection of samples by taking it without labels in a plastic carrybag. Though the Corporation had asked for detailed tests using the HPLC method and the GC-MS method, the Food Safety Department also carried out a mere rapid formalin test. The team which had developed the kit had made it clear that the test will not provide the right results if the samples are collected and the rapid test done some hours later. If the department was planning only this rapid test, they could have done it in front of the public at the Corporation office. The whole act of taking it to the laboratory and carrying out a rapid test is suspect,” he said.
Three samples taken
When contacted, Alex Isaac, the Assistant Commissioner, FSD, said that all the tests are carried out by qualified professionals only. “As per the Corporation's request, we had taken three samples and this was the result that the Government Analyst's Laboratory got. The delay in the other samples could be because different tests take different amounts of time. Some can be completed in as less as one hour, while some others take around 15 days,” he said.
