LAHORE: The Punjab Agriculture, Food and Drug Authority is currently conducting quality testing of 286 different food items, Secretary Food Safety and Consumer Protection Dr Kiran Khursheed said on Tuesday.
She was chairing a meeting of PAFDA attended by Director General Food Authority Raja Mansoor, Additional Director General Licensing Rao Pervaiz Akhtar, Member Research and Training Dr Irfan Ashiq, Member PAFDA Muhammad Nasir and other senior officials.
Dr Khursheed said modern testing laboratories had made it possible to identify adulterated food items promptly, and directed officials to complete food-sample testing reports in the shortest possible time so that results could be obtained without delay.
She also directed that the procurement process for modern equipment for PAFDA laboratories be completed immediately.
The instruction on turnaround time addresses the weakest link in food-safety enforcement. A sample lifted from a shop or a production unit has little legal value until the laboratory report is in hand, and delayed reports are the most common reason adulteration cases stall before they reach a court.
The secretary said the scope of testing was being further expanded beyond the current 286 items, and that the food-testing capabilities of PAFDA laboratories in Multan and Faisalabad were also being enhanced.
That decentralisation matters for enforcement in south and central Punjab, where samples have historically travelled to Lahore for analysis, adding days to every case file.
According to Dr Khursheed, timely testing results would enable legal action against those responsible for adulteration. She said providing Punjab’s citizens with adulteration-free and safe food was the provincial government’s top priority.
Food adulteration remains among the most persistent consumer complaints in Punjab, running from diluted and chemically treated milk to spices cut with colouring agents and cooking oil sold beyond its usable life. The Food Safety and Consumer Protection Department handles both laboratory verification and the field enforcement that follows, and its complaint helpline, 0800-02345, is the public entry point into that system.
The announcement’s practical significance is narrow but real which includes 286 items under regular test means a wider share of the everyday shopping basket now sits inside the formal verification net rather than outside it. Whether that translates into prosecutions, and how quickly, will depend on the laboratory turnaround the secretary has now put on record as a departmental instruction.
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