There may be glue, gulal in your fish…….Yogesh Naik
MUMBAI: Buying fish is no easy task and any foodie will vouch for that. While the buyers haggle to get the freshest catch at the best price, vendors pull out all stops to rake in the moolah. Now, vendors have upped the ante and are resorting to underhand methods to fake the freshness of their fish. An investigation by members of consumer group Mumbai Grahak Panchayat has revealed that many of the vendors add colour as well as translucent gum to pass off their stale stock as fresh.
The consumer group, which has been campaigning against food adulteration, has found that vendors often inject gum under a stale pomfret’s head to make it appear fresh. “People test the freshness of a pomfretone of the more costlier fish in the marketby lightly pressing its head. The presence of a white sticky fluid is an accurate marker for freshness. But when the fish turns stale, some vendors inject gum into the fish’s head so that it could pass the buyer’s freshness muster. A few retailers even remove some of the white fluid from their new stock and inject it into their old lot,” said Anuradha Deshpande of the Mumbai Grahak Panchayat.
The consumer group’s information is based on personal experiences of its members, which it followed up with internal investigations. Deshpande too was duped by vendors into buying adulterated fish. “Fisherfolk in Versova have told me that they resort to such methods in order to sell their stock,” she said.
It’s not just the pomfret that gets a makeover. Pink gulal (colour) is rubbed on the mouth of the Mumbaikar’s popular choice of fishthe Bombay Duckto make it appear fresh. “One can only imagine the damage these additives can wreck on the digestive system,” said Deshpande, adding that mandeli, another popular fish, is also coloured in a similar manner.
“Mandeli is known for its shine. Stale mandeli is pale in comparison, so vendors add colour to the fish. I suspect they use cheaper variants of the colour used by roadside jalebi makers,” said Deshpande. Prawns, too, are suspected of being touched up to give them that perfect shade of pink.
Bholeram Yadav, a fish retailer from Ghatkopar, said, “Though Mumbai is a coastal city, it takes time for the catch of fish to reach the retail market. And some retailers are known to apply colour and other stuff to make their fish look fresh. This way, they reduce losses.”
While state fisheries commissioner H R Pawar said that the adulteration should be investigated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the latter claimed to have no knowledge of this practice. Joint commissioner (Greater Mumbai) of the FDA, Suhas Choudhari, said, “We do not have any information on colour being added to fish. If the Mumbai Grahak Panchayat has information, they can give it to us and we will investigate their claims.”
Hoteliers, who buy in bulk, and consumerswho’ve had their fingers burnt or in this case coloured said this practice is rampant across Mumbai. Hotelier Girish Shetty, who owns the Jaihind group of hotels that are well-known for their fish preparations, said, “This adulteration happens regularly, but the fishermen know better than to try it on professional and regular buyers.” Shetty added that soaking prawns in saltwater to increase their weight is also a common practise.