VIJAYAWADA: Sleuths of Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) along with Vigilance officials conducted surprise raids on various restaurants and ghee manufacturing units in Vijayawada on Tuesday. It is learnt that the ghee manufacturing units are supplying low quality products to their customers, and the restaurants are also using banned chemicals to enhance the taste of the food.
According to regional food controller N Purnachandra Rao, officials from the two departments conducted raids at major restaurants in the city. During the inspection, the FSSAI officials noticed that a few restaurants are not maintaining hygienic conditions in the kitchen. They also collected samples of chicken fried rings, chicken dum biryani, mutton biryani, chicken wings and ground nut kernels from the restaurants.
The officials also raided a few general stores and seized loose groundnut oil, 65 kg of groundnut kernels, 70 kg of palmoline oil, 193 litres of cow ghee, 700 litres of buffalo ghee and 62 kg of vegan ghee, all worth `23,000. Later, addressing the media, the FSSAI officials said that preliminary inquiry found that the ghee products were adulterated using palmoline oil. They said that all the samples would be sent to the FSSAI lab for tests.