In today’s times, adulteration has become a big problem. Especially its increasing influence in food items is directly playing havoc with people’s health. Lakhs of samples are taken to check adulteration in government data, but when the samples fail and adulteration is found, the percentage of punishment is very low. In most of such cases, the matter is settled by simply imposing a fine. In such a situation, the way adulteration is gaining ground, it seems difficult to fulfill the dream of getting relief from it. Now let us understand these things through statistics.
Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Prataprao Jadhav said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha that from 2021-22 to 2025-26, about 8.87 lakh food samples were tested across the country. Of these, about 1.85 lakh samples (about 21%) did not meet the quality standards. These are based on government data from sample testing conducted by FSSAI and state food safety officials. Of these, maximum number of failed samples have been found in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
Punishment figures are quite low
Now if we look at the punishment given to those who commit such a large amount of negligence and adulteration, the number is very less. According to the data of 2025-26, 381 cases of giving less quantity in packaged goods were registered and a fine of Rs 71.81 lakh was collected. 2046 cases of selling goods openly under weight were registered and Rs 1.47 crore was recovered.
In 2025-26 alone, FSSAI and state governments tested 2,23,808 food samples. Of these, 40,023 samples were found bad or against the standards. Of these, 9,086 were unsafe (dangerous), 26,754 were of poor quality, 4,225 had labeling errors or incorrect information. Now action has been taken on how many of these? A fine of Rs 109.11 crore was collected in 31,878 civil cases. There was conviction in 1,918 criminal cases and a fine of Rs 5.71 crore was imposed. That is, in most of the cases, actions like fine, license cancellation were taken.
What are the figures in Gujarat?
According to data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Gujarat tested 68,356 samples of food items between 2021-22 and 2025-26. Of these, 4,437 samples were not found to be as per the standards, that is, overall about 6.5 percent of the samples failed.
Meanwhile, authorities initiated action to impose fines in 4,617 cases, but were able to punish the culprits only in 259 cases.
This shows that there is a huge difference between the action taken as per the rules and the punishment given to the culprits. Year-on-year data shows that every year 824 to 978 samples of food items not conforming to the standards were found in Gujarat.
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