No harmful chemical in milk: Agriculture minister

No harmful chemicals were found in the locally-produced milk in the country, Agriculture Minister Dr Abdur Razzak claimed today.

The minister said this at a press conference held at the Secretariat in Dhaka this noon.

Dr Abdur Razzak came up with the statement while presenting a report prepared by Bangladesh Agriculture Research Council (Barc).

The Barc made the report after it collected samples of the locally produced pasteurised and unpasteurised milk and tested those.

They tested the samples of pasteurised milk of Milk Vita, Aarong, Farm Fresh, RD, Savar Dairy and Pran, the reports states. They also collected and tested samples of non-branded milk available at markets in Dhaka’s Mohammadpur, Dhanmondi, Gulshan and Farmgate areas.

On the other hand, the council tested unpasteurised milk collected from producers of Rajason, Savar and other places, the report also says.

The samples were tested for ten antibiotics --Tetracycline, Chlortetracycline, Oxytetracycline, 4-Epitetracycline, 4-Epichlortetracycline, 4-Epioxytetracycline, Enrofloxacin, Ciprofloxacin, Chloramphenicol and Streptomycin.

The Sulpha drugs that have been tasted in the samples are -- Sulfamethazine, Sulfamerazine, Sulfadiazine, Sulfapyridine, Sulfapyridine, Sulfathiazole, Sulfamethoxazole, Sulphachloropyridazine, Sulfamethiazole, Sulphamethoxypyridazine, Sulphanilamide, Sulphadoxine, Trimethoprim.

Barc also tested the heavy metals Lead (Pb) and Chromium (Cr) in the samples.