Health Minister A.K. Walia says ingredients like caustic soda, chalk, urea have been found in milk packets, but PFA director Ashok Bakshi says the milk in Delhi is absolutely pure.

In three months, two dozen samples of milk tested deficient. The PFA director says the samples did not have adequate amounts of fat or protein. It was not that the milk had contained undesirable ingredients.

According to him, in the past five years, not a single packet of so-called synthetic or artificial milk has been seized. Bakshi says there is no such thing as synthetic milk. But District Commissioners in the city, whose job it is to send SDMs on milk raids, say that bad milk is not being detected because of a faulty system.

They say that the job of the SDMs, functioning as local health authorities ever since the mustard oil scam, ends the moment they get the samples.

The rest is up to PFA and the courts. The results of tests take weeks to come and hence no immediate action is ever taken. Meanwhile, consumers continue to get bad milk.

Says DC, New Delhi, Ashwani Kumar: ``The system is hotch-potch. PFA takes its own time to process samples. The interval, between when samples are taken to when the report is given, is made use of to doctor results. PFA inspectors are notorious for being hand in glove with traders.

``We can block sales only if samples fail. But the time taken in the procedure makes the whole operation ineffective,'' he said. SDMs were made local health authorities during the mustard oil adulteration phase because people and government had lost faith in PFA inspectors, he claimed.

He said the DCs should be given alternative laboratories if SDMs have doubts about PFA results. Mohini Srivastava, PFA in-charge of laboratory operations, said there was a huge misunderstanding about inspectors. ``The inspectors' job is to take samples. After that they are out of it.'' As for delays, she said it could not be helped, as a lot of paperwork was involved in the process.

Srivastava also pointed out that all the samples taken in Delhi comes to the PFA laboratory on Lawrence Road, which has just 10 chemists on the job.

Bakshi later told Express Newsline that with World Bank aid they are now planning to set up three more laboratories. The one in Nandnagri may start its operations in a year as they already had a building to house it. The other two in south and north-west districts will take more time, he says.

DC north-east, G.G. Saxena, said his SDMs had gone on 41 raids in March. He did not remember anything about the raids conducted in May or about what had happened to the results. Had a single supplier in his area ever been prevented from selling a particular brand of milk? He pleaded helplessness, saying his role ended with the raids. In west district, SDM Neeraj Bharti became a local hero after seizing 550 kg of chalk-powder bags from a Delhi Milk Scheme depot. He says people who adulterate milk are organised criminals. The achievement in the case of DMS was only possible because of the cooperation of PFA inspectors. The PFA had given in their report in just two days.