BSTI to submit test reports on pasteurised milk Sunday

Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI) will submit four separate reports on pasteurised milk, produced by 14 companies, before the High Court on Sunday, its lawyer has said.

Barrister Sarkar MR Hassan, who received the reports from the BSTI recently, told The Daily Star today that he will place those before the HC during hearing on the writ petition involving this issue on Sunday.

However, MR Hassan, lawyer for the BSTI, refused to say the contents of the reports.

Earlier in the day, Barrister MR Hassan sought permission from the HC bench of Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed and Justice Md Iqbal Kabir Lytton to swear an affidavit for submitting the test reports before it.

The bench also adjourned hearing on the writ petition till Sunday so that the petitioner’s lawyer Aneek R Haque can get copies of the reports and can examine them.

Contacted, Barrister Aneek told this correspondent that he was yet to get any copy of the test reports from BSTI’s lawyer.

During hearing the petition filed by Supreme Court lawyer Tanvir Ahmed, the HC bench on July 14 directed the BSTI to test pasteurised milk, produced by 14 companies which are registered under the quality detector, at four laboratories within a week.

The HC gave an order for testing samples of pasteurised milk to determine whether it contains hazardous substances such as antibiotics, detergent, coliform, staphylococcus and formalin.

The four institutions where the tests were conducted are -- Institute of Public Health, Bangladesh; International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b); Bangladesh Livestock Research Institute and Bangladesh Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.

There has been a controversy since a team of Dhaka University researchers and the BSTI gave conflicting test reports on milk last month. In its test, the DU team found detergent and antibiotics in samples of packaged milk available in kitchen markets. But the BSTI said it didn’t find any harmful substances in the milk samples it tested.