Check if there's poison on your platter this Puja

KOLKATA: If you have plans to gorge on streetfood this Puja, be judicious in your choice. A surprise food-safety drive by a Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) health department team on Thursday found street food stalls in and around bigger puja pandals selling adulterated stuff.

The surprise drive by eight groups was planned to check samples of fast food being sold along Bidhan Sarani (from Hedua to Hatibagan).The civic food inspectors found biryani in majority of roadside stalls unfit for consumption. The colour that the food vendors are mixing in biryani makes the popular dish adulterated, preliminary tests have confirmed, said Atin Ghosh, mayor-in-council member overseeing the KMC health department.

"Our team of inspectors collected samples from the roadside stalls and found them to have colour that is not permitted under the specific food safety guidelines," Ghosh said. "The inspectors will again visit those stalls on Friday to check whether the owners are adhering to rules and preparing the right kind of biryani," added a KMC health department official.

Besides the roadside stalls, samples of biryani were also collected from some well-known restaurants in the Hatibagan area. "We will visit some of these restaurants again on Friday and hand over food safety guidelines to the owners," Ghosh said. "We had to destroy bottles of tomato sauce as those were found to be highly adulterated. We have asked the roadside stalls to stop using these sauces or else we will close down these stalls," Ghosh added. The KMC health team is scheduled to visit stalls in south Kolkata on Sashthi and Saptami.