Watch out! Your milk may make you impotent

Watch out! Your milk may make you impotent

 

Food and Drug Administration has seized huge quantity of oxytocin which is frequently used by milkmen to make cattle lactate more than they usually do

 

Is the milk that you consume safe?

 

That Mumbai consumes millions of litres of milk is anybody's guess. But the quality of the health drink supplied to this city of ever-increasing population has always been under the eyes of suspicion. And why not; the city's huge demand cannot easily be produced day in and day out, unless some extraordinary effort is made.

The food and drugs administration (FDA), Maharashtra, has recently confiscated huge quantities of oxytocin — a hormone widely used to increase the milking capacity in cattle — that can seriously damage the quality of milk as well as the health of cattle.

FDA officials were on a trail to catch the culprits who illegally manufacture this hormone in Bihar and West Bengal. "Thousands of such syringe vials are brought to hundreds of tabelas (cattleshed) in Mumbai as well as other areas where milk is produced. In July, FDA conducted a major raid in Vagholi and Chandan Nagar in Pune where almost 83,000 vials of illegally manufactured oxytocin were confiscated," said PR Uttarwar, FDA joint commissioner (headquarters).

The seized boxes containing these vials do not bear any licence or address. "They only have the name of the manufacturer as Neelam Chemicals. The confiscated vials are worth Rs1 lakh. We have lodged an FIR against three persons at Lonikar police station," added Uttarwar.

But this is only the tip of the iceberg, if sources in FDA are to be believed. It is learnt that a huge quantity of oxytocin vials, almost 20 times higher than what was confiscated in Pune, has been seized in Thane. Officials are tight-lipped about the raids beings conducted in various areas as they fear that the culprits may get a whiff of it.

"We are tracking the case till Bihar. A person was arrested in connection with the Pune raids," is all what Uttarwar would say.

According to Dr Subhash Bhagwat, an expert in veterinary medicine, oxytocin is a lethal hormone if given excessively to cattle. "Many milkmen often give an overdose of the mammalian hormone and that results in serious health issues in cattle. A buffalo or a cow is naturally reluctant to lactate unless the calf is around. However, if she is injected with this hormone excessively, it seriously damages her health," said Dr Bhagwat.

"What is more dangerous is that milk taken out from cattle which are given regular dose of oxytocin can damage the health of those who consume it. In case of women, consumption of such milk leads to gynaecological problems while males may turn impotent," said Bhagwat.