The Gujarat government has been allocated five more micro food safety on wheels (FSW), which will allow the food and drug authorities to conduct more than 100 kinds of safety tests on milk, oil, and other food items on the spot.
The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) had previously allocated four food safety on wheels vans to the state’s Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA) in 2017 and 2020 and has allocated five more in one go now.
Apart from conducting simple tests for common adulterants in milk, water, edible oil and other food items of daily consumption, these mobile units are used for awareness building around food safety, hygiene and promoting healthy eating habits in citizens at large.
“The addition of five micro food safety on wheels would help in enhancing our outreach and scale up surveillance, testing, and food safety awareness,” said health minister Rushikesh Patel.
The mobile units are equipped with a milk analyser that can help in analysing milk quality, digital refractometer for testing cold drinks and juices, testometer for testing oil quality, and laminar airflow, fume hood, autoclave, and BOD incubator for conducting various microbiological tests.
The units can carry out tests for Ph, conductivity, and TDS in water and other cold drinks, total polar compound in oils, while the magic box instrument can carry out as many as 102 types of spot tests on a range of food items. The new mobile units are also connected with the Global Positioning System (GPS).