Minister issues directives:

Greenlight for countrywide food inspections

*Bid to prevent unauthorized chemicals in food items

*Some items contain cancer causing substances

Nadira GUNATILLEKE

In a bid to prevent unauthorized chemicals and colourings from being added to food items, Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena has given complete authority to food inspectors attached to the Health Ministry to inspect any food commodities anywhere in the country, a Health Ministry spokesman said.

According to the spokesman, the ministry has detected a species of artificially coloured rice called Rosa Samba which is not available anywhere in the world. “There is no such variety of rice called Rosa Samba (Pink Samba). No colour can be added to any type of rice under rules and regulations. Traders add dangerous artificial colouring to rice to make white rice look like red rice because the demand for red rice has gone up.

“Doctors recommend red rice for persons suffering from Non Communicable diseases such as diabetes.

“Red rice is one of the most popular health foods,” the spokesman said.

The ministry detected many food items including rice, meat, beef and spices with injurious artificial colours which include Carcinogens.

Dangerous artificial colours darken the natural colours of natural food items and such artificial colours make expired food items look fresh and attractive, he said.

“Traders add artificial colours made out of chemicals which contain Carcinogens to make a higher profit. But such food can cause cancer,” he said.

The ministry has given powers to all food inspectors to inspect food items available in any part of the country.

Earlier, they had been assigned areas, divisions in the country in which they could serve.

But now they are free to serve in anypart of the country and detect unsafe and unhealthy foods. Annually, around 15,000 new cancer patients are detected in Sri Lanka and the government spends over 3500 million to treat them, he added.

Carcinogen is a substance responsible for causing cancer. This may be due to the ability to damage the genome or to the disruption of cellular metabolic processes. Common examples of carcinogens are inhaled asbestos, certain dioxins, and tobacco smoke.