The Cuttack Municipal Corporation seized a huge amount of expired buns and breads following a raid at the multi-national fast food chain KFC outlet at Badambadi in Cuttack on Tuesday.
As per reports, not only the expired bread, the officials have also confiscated cooked food items including non-vegetarian food and fried rice which did not have any packaging date printed on those.
The raids were conducted after complaints were received by the Civic body that the restaurant was serving substandard and expired food items to its customers.
A top CMC official said that the seized food items have been sent to a lab for further analysis. If the test reports confirm sub-standard food, then the popular restaurant chain will be served a notice and subsequently sealed, informed the officials.
Speaking to media, CMC health officer, Dr Satyabrata Mohapatra said, “Though we have received complaints, it was a scheduled inspection too which revealed that the restaurant was using buns and breads which have been expired.”
“The breads are made using yeast. So those should be discarded following expiry. But we found that the law was being flouted, so we seized the dated food,” said Mohapatra.
Despite repeated crackdowns, adulteration of food articles continues unabated in Cuttack. The thriving unhealthy business in the Millennium City was recently brought to light once again on October 6 when the CMC seized as many as 10 cartons of putrid eggs while the cargo was on its’ way to a bakery unit at Saanta Sahi from Athagarh.
A ground report by OTV from Khannagar where the egg-laden vehicle was intercepted showed that the consignment had a total of 10 cartons with each containing 240 eggs.
Notably, several adulterated food processing units had been unearthed during a series of crackdowns launched by the Commissionerate Police in Cuttack.
In November last year, deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Prateek Singh had informed that as many as 14 food adulteration units were detected in just two months time and goods and property worth Rs 4,40,10,000 were seized from the illegal units.
Meanwhile, the fast food giant has issued a press statement saying, "KFC holds the highest respect for the law of the land and complies with government rules and regulations. The respective teams at our franchise partner's end extended complete cooperation to the officials. We have stringent processes in place to make sure that the food and beverages we serve across KFC restaurants meet the highest quality standards and are completely safe for consumption. We follow a formal process to discard products that have crossed their expiration date and time; and these are never served to consumers."