Authority seals eight food outlets in Kohat

KOHAT: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Food Safety and Halal Food Authority on Thursday sealed eight outlets, mostly chicken shops for not following the standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Talking to reporters, the authority’s Deputy Director Operations Kamran Khan said five chicken shops were sealed for not following set criteria, which included not displaying in the open frozen chicken-meat, avoid selling already slaughtered poultry, properly covering the butchered chickens, and appropriate hygiene condition of the premises.

He added that the other outlets were sealed for allegedly using banned ingredients including China salt, non-food colours and poor hygiene conditions.

The official said several visits were made to these outlets and the businessmen were guided time and again but no visible improvement was noted.

In another operation, a milk tanker carrying 10,000 litres of milk to Peshawar was inspected by the FS&HFA.

The tanker was fined Rs50,000 for having water adulteration of over 19 per cent.

The KP FS&HFA Kohat since its inception in late March 2018 has inspected 2929 outlets, out of which 96 were sealed for using toxic ingredients including China salt, non-food colour, selling expired items, mislabeling, poor hygiene conditions and other shortcomings. Harmful food items, mainly sweets, substandard and expired cold drinks, pops, etc, were also discarded in a huge quantity during the operations.