Ghotala.in

India’s sour food safety record Scandal

Before dawn every day he joins hundreds of wholesale traders at Delhi’s Azadpur Mandi, a sprawling, chaotic market where trucks blare Bollywood music, porters haul huge brown sacks of fruit and vegetables and hawkers ply tea and cigarettes.

His own trade is in rosy red apples, laced with calcium carbide.

Bhim says he’s been adding chemicals to his apples for years to artificially ripen them after a long journey from the Himalayan foothills, despite being told that it causes cancer.

As far as he knows, no-one has ever died from eating his produce. So he can’t understand why the authorities are pestering him now, and why he has to pay so many bribes to keep his business afloat.

“This is an age-old practice, trust me, I know. But suddenly doctors are claiming that it causes cancer. Come now, how is that possible?” he said, wrapped up in a woollen grey cap and anorak on a chilly Saturday morning at the Azadpur Mandi market.

“Everyone still does it. The only difference is that it’s done very surreptitiously now. And let me tell you, it will never stop. Why would anyone want to harm their sales?”

An interview with a senior food safety official starkly illustrates just how far India has to go to enforce the regulations properly.