Danish authorities strengthen quality control on South Asian groceries

[TamilNet, Friday, 19 September 2008, 09:09 GMT]
Danish food inspection authorities, on inspecting groceries selling oriental food products mainly from Sri Lanka and India, recently ordered a shop in Herning city to destroy all its food items and in the ensuing inspection on 5 September of two other shops in Grindsted where a large quantity of food items from Sri Lanka were seized on the assumption of illegal sales.

A news release issued by the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, said that the inspection on 5 September also revealed that the shops had serious problem because of the rodents found where the food stuffs were stocked.

Oriental food items like spices, flour, grain products, fruits, vegetables, frozen fish and meat imported mainly from Sri Lanka and India were affected by the bad maintenance of the grocery shops.

It appeared that this had been a long standing problem, the report said and warned that the food items bought in the shops could be polluted with bacteria that cause diseases. The sale of many food items from South Asia like many varieties of rice, biscuits, grains, nuts, spices, conserved products like coconut milk and frozen fish is presumed to have been carried illegally by the shops according to Danish authorities.