Substandard ingredients are used to produce icecreams which are harmful to a one’s health. It may specially eliminate children’s antioxidants, which may damage kidneys, livers and blood cancer, experts said.
Lack of monitoring is enabling the owners of such ice-cream factories to become rich in a short period of time selling such unhygienic items.
Upon investigation by the UNB correspondent, it was found that most of these shady factories operate in congested spaces, with ice-cream freezers being located on one side and ingredients such as dense sugar, inedible colour, sweetener and saccharine on the side of dirty floors.
To package the products attractively, workers often resort to emulating labels of other companies, such as Narshingdi’s Kironmala Kulfi, Noahkhali’s Ittyadi, Quality Ice Cream, Special Chocobar and many more.
These labels can be found to be sold at the city’s Khan Jahan Ali Hawkers’ Market, located in Boro Bazar.
Although those labels include details of all the ingredients, those are not adhered to in the ice-cream factories.
Besides, there is no date of manufacturing and/or expiry in the packages.
Scores of nameless ice-cream factories are located in the city’s Azad Laundry Mor, Gallamari Agrani Bank Colony areas, Faridmollar More area, Khalishpur and other areas.
They are frequently fined and sealed off by mobile courts, but the owners always manage to reopen and resume their operations soon after.
Sohana Jahan, mother of a student in the city’s Zohra Khatun School, said that she had given an ice-cream to her child on their way back home from school one day, which upset her stomach.
Her child had to be hospitalised soon after for seven days. Even the alleged food colour remained imprinted on her hands for a long time.
Md Moniruzzaman Moni, a resident of Daulatpur area, said these factories should be shut down permanently.
Sheikh Khokon, owner of one such ice-cream factory in the city’s Faridmollar Mor, said there is no factory in the city which has a licence to produce.
He added that everyone uses the same ingredients and colours from the wholesale markets in Bara Bazar.
Civil surgeon ASM Abdur Razzak said the artificial food colour used in making the ice-creams are hazardous to health, which may damage one’s kidneys and liver if taken.
Abdul Mannan, a director at the district’s Bangladesh Standard and Testing Institution (BSTI), said only one ice-cream factory in the city has licence to produce ice-cream, but no factory has the permission to produce that.
Additional district magistrate Golam Mainuddin Hasan said mobile court drives against such factory owners will continue.