Foreign noodles, soft drinks in Manipur
Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, June 08 2015 :
Manipur and most of the North Eastern states have been the main outlet markets for bottled and canned soft drinks, noodles and other snacks said to have been smuggled from China and other countries in SE Asia.
Though the Manipur government is under pressure from the centre like other states to ban sale of Maggi and other energy drinks these "foreign" drinks and snacks are freely on sale in many areas.
These had never been brought under scanner in the past with the result that people do not know the food worthiness and health hazards of these items.
It is observed that the date of manufacture, the particulars of the company and ingredients are never disclosed in the packets and according to Indian law this is not permissible.
What is most objectionable is that the cold drinks, either plastic bottle or can, do not have manufacturing dates which means what one drinks may be poisonous.
Being smuggled items there is nobody to make accountable in case of food poisoning.
The noodles said to be from some foreign countries may actually be spurious items manufactured by the unscrupulous businessmen of India.
There are many other bogus items with fancy trade names and people have reasons to doubt the authenticity of these items on sale here and there.
As there is no proposal to test these items in laboratories people in general and children in particular are subjected to slow poisoning.