Dhaka, July 14 – The High Court on Sunday directed the Bangladesh Standards Testing Institute (BSTI) to conduct test of pasteurised milk produced by its all the 14 registered companies in the market.
The HC bench asked the BSTI to conduct the test at four laboratories and submit the lab reports separately before the HC bench on July 23.
The laboratories are: at Institute of Public Health (IPH), International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDRB), Feed and Food Safety Laboratory under Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute, and Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR).
All the laboratories will conduct test individually after collecting sample randomly from the markets, the HC bench said.
The laboratories will test the milk to determine whether there is health hazardous substance like total bacterial count, coliform, staphylococcus, acidity, formalin, detergent and antibiotic in the pasteurised milk.
The HC bench said that BSTI would collect the sample of pasteurised milk of the companies from the market randomly in presence of representatives from the four laboratories.
The court also directed the BSTI to submit before it on July 23 the action plan of the committee formed by BSTI to determine the criteria of developing its standard to detect detergent and antibiotics in pasteurize milk.
The High Court bench comprising Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed and Justice Md Iqbal Kabir passed the order during hearing a writ petition filed by Supreme Court lawyer Advocate Tanveer Ahmed in May last year.
The HC bench fixed July 23 for passing further order on this issue.
Barrister Aneek R Haque appeared for the writ petitioner while Barrister Sarker MR Hasan argued for the BSTI.
Earlier in the morning yesterday, the HC bench wanted to know what steps BSTI has been taken following two test reports on milk prepared by Dhaka University researchers.
In the report, a group of researchers led by Professor ABM Faroque, immediate past director of the Biomedical Research Centre, claimed that antibiotics, detergent, coliform bacteria and other forms of hazardous materials were found in pasteurized milk products.
At a press release on July 13, the Biomedical Research Centre claimed they found the presence of antibiotics in dairy products in its fresh research.
The BSTI has been asked to inform the High Court how much time it would need to develop its laboratory and parameters to detect antibiotics in the milk.
During the hearing, petitioner’s lawyer Barrister Aneek R Haque placed report on DU test reports on milk.
Dhaka University researchers have tested milk twice since last month and found antibiotics in it.
On June 25, DU’s Pharmacy Faculty and Biomedical Research Centre said they detected detergent and three types of antibiotics in packaged milk.
DU researchers announced they had found traces of detergent and antibiotics in samples of pasteurised and unpasteurised milk of Pran, Milk Vita, Igloo, Aarong and Farm Fresh.
On the same day, the BSTI, the country’s lone quality control authority for food, submitted a report to the High Court, claiming it did not find anything harmful in the milk samples it examined.
Following the release of the research findings, an additional secretary of the fisheries and livestock ministry, Kazi Wasi Uddin, on July 9 threatened legal action against the researchers who claimed to have found antibiotics in pasteurised milk of different brands.
Then, the researchers have once again tested the milk and found antibiotics used for humans — Oxytetracycline, Enrofloxacin, Ciprofloxacin and Levofloxacin — in all of the 10 samples of pasteurised and non-pasteurised milk they tested.
Prof ABM Faroque, immediate past director of Biomedical Research Centre, unveiled the findings on Saturday saying three of the samples contained all the four antibiotics while six had three. There were two antibiotics in one sample. – Staf Reporter
