PANAJI
Nearly seven years after the formalin-in-fish controversy rocked Goa, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane on Tuesday went public with the assertion that fish imported into the State for sale has been free of the carcinogenic preservative since 2019.
Over two lakh samples picked from three different locations in Goa -- the two border entry points at Patradevi and Polem -- and also from the wholesale market on the outskirts of Margao were tested since 2019 and they have shown no traces of formalin, Rane said.
He said, the State partnered with the Quality Council of India (QCI) to conduct these quality checks round-the-clock at these three key locations.
According to him, 33,805 fish samples were tested from Pollem in these six years. In the same period 33,989 samples were tested at Patradevi and another 1,32,717 tests were done at the Margao Wholesale Market. “All these samples tested negative for formalin,” Rane said.
This year too between March and June the fish samples picked from both North Goa and South Goa districts were also tested and none were found to contain added formaldehyde, Rane said, adding that the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) conducts these regular fish testing exercises in its own advanced laboratory and also through other NABL-accredited third-party laboratories.
He said, the FDA laboratory at its headquarters in Bambolim is well equipped with sophisticated instruments such as GC-MS/MS, LC-MS/MS, and ICP-MS, thus enabling thorough testing to detect any contaminants.
The formalin-in-fish hit the State by a Storm in June-July of 2018 when Eva Fernandes, who was then the designated officer under the FSSAI Act for South Goa, had sealed several tonnes of fish transportation trucks at the Margao market after tests had confirmed presence of formaldehyde in them.
The issue blew into a major controversy when the political establishment moved to unseal the fish trucks on grounds that fresh tests conducted at the FDA laboratories had proved that the formaldehyde traced was within “permissible limits”.
Fernandes was swiftly transferred and replaced, but the outrage over suspicions of formalin contamination of fish triggered by her 2018 pre-dawn action took several months to die down and was eventually forgotten.
