Test pasteurised milk in four laboratories
High Court asks BSTI
STAFF REPORTER, Dhaka
The High Court (HC) yesterday directed the Bangladesh Standards Testing Institute (BSTI) to test the pasteurised milk produced by all the 14 registered companies in the market. The HC bench of Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed and Justice Md Iqbal Kabir passed the order during the hearing a writ petition, filed by Supreme Court (SC) lawyer advocate Tanveer Ahmed in May last year. The court asked the BSTI to conduct the tests at four laboratories and submit the lab reports separately before the HC bench on July 23.
The laboratories are at the Institute of Public Health (IPH), International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDRB), Feed and Food Safety Laboratory under Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute, and the Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR).
The HC bench said that all the laboratories will conduct the tests individually after randomly collecting milk samples from the market. The laboratories will test the milk to determine the existence of hazardous substances like coliform, staphylococcus, acidity, formalin, detergent and antibiotics in the pasteurised milk.
The HC bench said that BSTI would collect the samples of
pasteurised milk of the companies from the market randomly in the 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 the BSTI to determine the criteria of developing its standard to detect detergent and antibiotics in pasteurised milk.
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 yesterday, the HC bench wanted to know what steps BSTI has taken following two test reports on milk, prepared by Dhaka University (DU) researchers.
In the report, a group of researchers, led by Prof. ABM Faroque, immediate past director of the Biomedical Research Centre, found antibiotics, detergent, coliform bacteria and other forms of hazardous materials in pasteurised milk products.
Through a press release on July 13, the Biomedical Research Centre claimed that its researchers found the presence of antibiotics in dairy products available in the market.
The BSTI has been asked to inform the HC how much time it would need to develop its laboratory and parameters to detect antibiotics in the milk.
During the hearing, the petitioners lawyer, barrister Aneek R Haque, placed the DU test reports on milk before the court.
The DU researchers have tested milk twice since last month and found antibiotics in it. On June 25, DUs Pharmacy Faculty and Biomedical Research Centre said they detected detergent and three types of antibiotics in packaged milk.
In another test done later, the researchers once again tested the milk and found antibiotics used for humansoxytetracycline, enrofloxacin, ciprofloxacin and levofloxacinin all the 10 samples of pasteurised and non-pasteurised milk they tested. Prof. ABM Faroque unveiled the findings on Saturday.
