Kathmandu, June 11

Minister for Agriculture, Land Management and Cooperative Chakrapani Khanal led a monitoring team and sealed the storerooms of three dairy factories in Balaju Industrial Area today.

Storerooms of Aadhunik Dairy Pvt Ltd, Pushpa Dairy Pvt Ltd and Samudayak Dairy Pvt Ltd were sealed after the monitoring team suspected that powdered milk used in factories were of ‘low quality’ and did not mention any manufacturing dates in the packaging.

Officials from the ministry and Department of Food Technology and Quality Control, along with mediapersons, raided four dairy factories. Three were found to have violated the standard called ‘Good Manufacturing Practice’, which demands basic criteria such as cleanliness inside the factory.

According to Director General of DoFTQC Sanjeev Kumar Karna, the officials also collected sample of powdered milk from additional 30 milk-producing factories to determine whether the products were healthy and to take action accordingly. He said, “Factories, whose storerooms are sealed, can only produce milk collected from farmers. If they need to use powder milk, they have to take a separate permission from the authority.”

Spokesperson for DoFTQC Purna Chandra Wosti said, “We had been receiving a large number of complaints from consumers regarding the poor quality of milk. In recent days, complaints from farmers that they were not able to sell their milk had also increased.”

He also said the government-run Dairy Development Corporation had complied with all necessary criteria to produce milk and milk products.

Minister Khanal vowed to punish all manufactures of edible products who did not comply with the production standards.