​Bitter milk: on the Rajamahendravaram milk adulteration case

The events in Rajamahendravaram in Andhra Pradesh involving the mass poisoning of consumers by milk contaminated with ethylene glycol sound a regulatory alarm. As of March 8, the death toll was 11, with approximately 20 other people, including infants, hospitalised. The police have invoked Sections 103 (punishment for murder) and 105 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) of the BNS. The vendor allegedly continued to supply the milk despite complaints about a bitter taste and being warned that a coolant leak could be poisonous, so it seems reasonable that the State is treating gross negligence in food safety as a serious criminal offence. However, there could also be counterproductive effects. Milk is a staple in Indian households and contamination by an industrial compound already infamous in India for its lethality carries the potential to trigger a crisis of confidence in local, unbranded milk supplies. Children and the elderly are most affected by ethylene glycol poisoning due to their higher metabolic sensitivity and lower renal reserves, respectively. This could push people towards pasteurised milk from regulated cooperatives such as Amul or Vijaya, which seems desirable, but a large share of milk is also distributed in India through small vendors. Since the State has invoked criminal charges, including ‘murder’, against the offenders, marginal actors may quit the market or shift further into informality, which can paradoxically undermine oversight.

Though the State may be projecting a strong hand at work by criminalising the vendor’s alleged conduct, the importance of regulations cannot be overstated. Food-safety compliance is as much about punishing bad actors as about reducing the cost of doing the right thing. In the informal supply chain, cold-chain monitoring and hygiene inspections are almost entirely absent, leaving room for contamination. Subsidised testing kits and cooperative chilling facilities can thus reduce the risk at small dairies. Regulators may also consider safe-harbour provisions that ease penalties for dairy operators who report contamination at their facilities; this could also encourage early disclosure, giving authorities time to save lives. But this also makes consistent enforcement crucial. That a dairy could operate without a safety licence for 11 years raises serious questions about the oversight of the local government and the FSSAI: the local authorities failed to conduct periodic field audits, and the FSSAI did not enforce standardised safety protocols. The risk of being detected becomes negligible and even the harshest criminal charges cannot amount to a meaningful preventive measure. An effective system must realise that reliably detecting violations and imposing timely sanctions are a better deterrent than stringent penalties that do not aid enforcement and rarely lead to convictions.