On the occasion of National Milk Day on November 26, 2021 NDRI launched a campaign to make the public aware about presence of adulteration in milk. To commemorate the day, NDRI organized a testing camp at its Main Gate wherein General Public was invited to test their milk samples free of cost.
Dr. M.S. Chauhan, Director, ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal initiated the campaign. Speaking on this occasion, Dr. Chauhan said that every year India celebrates National Milk Day on November 26 on the occasion of birth anniversary of Dr. Verghese Kurien who is also known as “Father of the White Revolution”. In this year, to commemorate the National Milk Day, NDRI decided to make the public aware about the presence of adulterants in milk. He said that though India is largest milk producer in the world, the quality of milk always remains in the news because of the occasional reports of the presence of adulterants in milk. He said that over the past 5 years, NDRI has developed rapid and convenient methods to test the presence of adulterants in milk. These include paper strip based tests for detection of neutralizers, urea, glucose, maltodextrin, sucrose, hydrogen peroxide, formaldehyde etc. Apart from this a sensitive method has also been developed to detect the presence of detergents in milk.
He further emphasised that the technology of strip based tests has been commercialized to many dairy cooperatives, dairy industries as well as entrepreneurs. The product is available in the market. He informed that in one of the recent study titled Economic Impact of ICAR Research done by ICAR-National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi, it was highlighted that the annual benefit from the adulteration based technologies developed by ICAR-NDRI to the dairy consumers was estimated at Rs. 174.44 crore in 2018-19 in terms of saving cost on medicine as well as ensured nutrition. This study also indicated that the consumers are willing to pay a higher price (15%) for the quality tested milk.
On this occasion, Dr. Dheer Singh, Joint Director (Research), said that this particular camp has been organized in collaboration with a start-up company Delmos Research Private Ltd. He further informed that NDRI transferred the technology of detection of adulteration in milk to this start-up in the year 2017-18 and now the company has pan India presence. Mr. Babbar Singh, CEO of Delmos Research Private Ltd. was also present on this occasion and he indicated that presently they are supplying the milk adulteration kits to organized dairy industries only but in near future they have a plan to launch these kits for house-hold consumers. The tests are very easy to use and are cost effective.