Parliament witnessed a passionate crusade against food adulteration when AAP MP Raghav Chadha took the floor in Rajya Sabha. He depicted a nation under siege by contaminated edibles, with children, elders, and mothers-to-be bearing the brunt of this health catastrophe.
In vivid detail, Chadha unraveled the adulteration web: milk fortified with urea, vegetables force-ripened via oxytocin injections causing severe ailments, paneer padded with starch and corrosives, ice creams with laundry agents, juices with lab-made essences, oils diluted with machinery grease, spices bulked with rubble and wood shavings, tea tainted artificially, poultry juiced with steroids, and ghee substitutes in confections.
He invoked research horrors—71% milk urea-positive, 64% neutralized illicitly—amid mismatched supply and demand. Vegetables? 25% contaminated over 11 years. Indian masalas, exiled from UK and EU markets for pesticides linked to cancer, roam free locally.
‘Items deemed unfit for beasts overseas poison our tables,’ Chadha grieved. Proposals flowed: fortify FSSAI’s arsenal of personnel and labs, escalate economic punishments, mandate recall disclosures naming culprits, ban bogus wellness ads. Chadha’s oratory isn’t mere rhetoric—it’s a blueprint for rescuing India’s palate from peril.