Abstract

DETECTION OF VARIOUS ADULTERANTS PRESENT IN MARKETED MILK SAMPLES

Aggarapu Susmitha* and Eri Gireesh Kumar

ABSTRACT

Milk has been recognised as an almost complete food for human beings and it acts as a source of essential nutrients like carbohydrates, proteins, fat, vitamins and minerals. It is required for promoting growth and maintenance of health. It can however also serve as a vehicle for the transmission of chemicals and other impurities. The study was carried out keeping in view the adulteration of milk with various additives to increase its marketability. However consumption of adulterated milk causes serious health hazards and it reduces the quality of milk. To carry out the research on milk adulteration, seven marketed samples were collected from local area of Rajampet, A.P. and subjected to analysis to identify various adulterants like cane sugar, starch, urea, ammonia, sulphates, glucose, sodium chloride, nitrates, neutralisers, detergents, hydrogen peroxide, boric acid, salicylic acid and water tests as per FSSAI guidelines. Among the above tested adulterants, water is the common adulterant which reduces the nutritional value of milk and others are sodium chloride, added urea, neutralisers, detergents and rarely preservatives like boric acid and salicylic acid in the selected milk samples. Consumption of lower quality adulterated milk may lead to serious human health issues. Hence it is important to have an efficient and reliable quality control system that will regularly monitor, combined efforts from scientific communities and the regulatory authorities. Therefore, there is a need to create awareness among the milk users about the harmful effects of adulterants and was fulfilled through newspaper articles.

Keywords: milk adulteration, FSSAI, detection.