Yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s company Patanjali has been accused of selling substandard cow ghee. Following a court order, a total fine of Rs 1.40 lakh has been imposed on Patanjali ghee’s manufacturer and distributor. However, Patanjali Ayurved Limited has defended itself, calling this order flawed and legally invalid.
In Pithoragarh, Uttarakhand, after Patanjali ghee samples failed tests, the Additional District Magistrate Court imposed fines of Rs 1.25 lakh and Rs 15,000 respectively on the ghee manufacturer, distributor and retail seller after the samples failed in both state and central laboratories.
Assistant Food Safety Commissioner of Pithoragarh, R.K. Sharma, told news agency that “a case was registered against all three under Section 46/4 of the Food Safety Act in the ADM Pithoragarh court, which delivered its verdict on November 19, and we received the copy today.”
According to Sharma, ghee samples were collected in October 2020 and sent to the state food laboratory in Rudrapur, where the samples failed. Subsequently, traders requested testing at the central government laboratory in September 2021, where the samples were declared failed in 2022.
The Assistant Food Safety Commissioner of Pithoragarh said, “After that, our then Food Safety Officer Dilip Kumar Jain was ordered to file a case in the SDM court on February 17, 2022, whose verdict came on November 19 this month.”
What Patanjali Said About Court Order
Patanjali Ayurved Limited issued a clarification on its official social media platform ‘X’ on Friday regarding this matter. The statement said that this clarification is regarding a case that came to our notice through media reports about a sample of Patanjali cow ghee taken on October 20, 2020 under the Food Safety Act by the Food Safety Department, Pithoragarh, and the related court order. This order is flawed and legally invalid for the following reasons:
The referral laboratory was not accredited by NABL for testing cow ghee, therefore the testing done there is not legally acceptable. It is ridiculous and highly objectionable that a sub-standard lab has declared Patanjali’s best cow ghee as sub-standard.
The parameters on which the sample was declared failed were not even applicable at that time, so using them is legally wrong.
The re-testing was done after the sample’s expiry date had passed, which is invalid according to law.
The court has passed an adverse order without considering all these major arguments, which is not correct from a legal standpoint. An appeal is being filed against this order in the Food Safety Tribunal, and we have full confidence that based on the solid grounds of our case, this matter will be decided in our favor before the tribunal.
Anyway, nowhere in this verdict has Patanjali cow ghee been declared harmful for consumption. Only a negligible difference from the RM Value standard in ghee has been clarified. This RM Value indicates the level of volatile fatty acid in ghee (which becomes volatile when ghee is heated). This is a natural process. It does not affect the quality of ghee. Just like minor hemoglobin differences in the body are natural.
This RM Value standard varies regionally based on animal feed and climate conditions. Even the government regulatory body FSSAI keeps changing this RM Value. Sometimes different RM Values are provided on a regional basis, and sometimes a single RM Value is fixed at the national level. Patanjali collects milk and cow ghee from across the country based on strict standards and testing and sells it nationally.
Source: Daily Kiran
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