Team Herald
MAPUSA: Artificially ripened bananas worth Rs 60,000 were confiscated by a Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) team during a raid at Mapusa yard, on Friday.
The confiscated bananas, with assistance of Mapusa Municipal Council, were later sent to the town’s waste disposal site for destruction.
The raid was conducted following direction by Minister for Health Vishwajit Rane, on Thursday, to crack down on godowns and yards to check artificial ripening of bananas in the State.
In a series of tweets, Rane informed that he had a meeting with FDA officials wherein he instructed them to form different teams and crack down on the elements involved in artificial ripening of bananas.
The raiding team was headed by FDA officer Richard Noronha and comprised of Food Safety Officers Amit Mandrekar and Sujata Shetgaonkar.
The team inspected 15 vendors at Mapusa yard, where the team thoroughly checked for any evidence of artificial ripening of the bananas using chemical. While the FDA team found no evidence of chemical ripening in 14 shops, at one shop operated by one Noor Ahmad Allupty, it found bottles of chemical suspected to be Ethephon.
On questioning, Allupty admitted that he was using chemicals for ripening bananas. Following his admission, a stock of 1,500 kgs of bananas worth Rs 60,000, from his shop, was confiscated. The offending vendor was also served a legal notice.
Meanwhile, fruit samples from other 14 shops were drawn for laboratory analysis. The FDA team informed that samples also would be sent to a third-party lab for testing.
Artificial ripening of Bananas with Ethephon and calcium carbide powder are suspected to cause cancer.
In his tweet, Rane had said that the crack teams of FDA will raid each and every godown and yard in Mapusa, Margao, Panjim and Ponda where the bananas are stored.
