Adulterated food is a risk to public health

Adulterated and rotten foods, as well as chemically-treated fruit, are a serious public health hazard, and there are no effective steps against this. Pesticide is being use excessively to produce vegetables and health risks steadily increase. The achievements of our health sector in last few decades will not be sustainable unless we take strict and effective steps to halt production and marketing of adulterated food.

Poison enters the food chain due to excessive use of pesticides. Adulterated food is detrimental to our liver and nervous system. The number of patients visiting neurologists and liver specialists is increasing due to pesticides in food, according to experts.

Harmful chemicals in food, carbides in fruits and formalin in vegetables, fish and perishable items are also a public health hazard.
Public health is further at risk due to commercial expansion of poultry and fish industries. Harmful raw materials are being used in these two industries. Fish and poultry feed are being produced from tannery waste. According to a report published in Prothom Alo on Thursday, the law enforcers seized 2800 tonnes of poultry feed produced from tannery during drives in the capital’s Hazaribagh area.

Poultry and fish feed are being produced from tannery waste in Hazaribagh and Savar tannery industry areas for long and are being sold and used across the country. On 31 January 2018, Bangladesh Paribesh Andolon (BAPA) and Work for Better Bangladesh (WBB) organised a discussion title ‘Poisonous Tannery Waste in Poultry and Public Health in Deep Crisis’ in Dhaka. They revealed that 20 factories in a village of Bhakurta in Savar are producing poultry feed from poisonous tannery waste.

Twenty types of chemicals are used in the tannery industry. The poisonous waste of tannery are used in producing fish and poultry feed.

Fish and poultry are our sources of protein. We are eating poisonous food.
There is a ban on producing poultry feed from tannery waste. But the production and marketing of these harmful items have not stopped. On the contrary, this is expanding. The mobile court on Tuesday jailed 11 persons including eight innocent workers in Hazaribagh area. Strict measures need to be taken against the factory owners. These factories have to be closed permanently.