A Tamil Nadu-based company on Friday denied that the ghee it had been supplying to the Sri Venkateswara temple in Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati was adulterated, The Indian Express reported.
Earlier on Friday, the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam, which runs the temple, blacklisted the company, AR Dairy Food Private Limited, accusing it of supplying highly adulterated ghee. However, Kannan, a quality control officer at the company, described the allegations as unsubstantiated.
“We have been operational since 1998, and this is the first time such accusations have been made against us,” the official told a Tamil news channel.
Kannan said that after AR Dairy was given approval to supply ghee to the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam, a four-member team from the temple administration visited the company’s plant to assess quality control mechanisms.
“Our ghee samples are first tested in national laboratories before being dispatched to TTD,” the quality control officer said. “Upon arrival, TTD’s own food safety officer checks the samples again.”
Kannan added that the company provided only a “very small volume” of the total ghee that was used to produce laddoos at the temple as prasadam, or holy offerings.
Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam Executive Officer J Shyamala Rao alleged on Friday that among the five companies contracted to supply ghee, AR Dairy was the only one that provided a substandard product, The Hindu reported. The ghee was found to contain a dangerously high amount of foreign fat, Rao said.
Foreign fat refers to milk fat being adulterated with cheaper alternatives, such as vegetable oils or animal fat.
Rao said that the trust that runs the temple did not have a sophisticated laboratory to check for quality, which left it vulnerable to such adulteration. He added that to prevent such incidents from recurring, the temple trust was planning to set up an in-house laboratory with the help of the National Dairy Development Board.
The controversy broke out on Wednesday, when Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party chief N Chandrababu Naidu claimed that substandard ingredients and animal fat were used to make laddoos at the Sri Venkateswara temple when the YSR Congress Party was in power.
The Telugu Desam Party released a report from the Centre for Analysis and Learning in Livestock and Food lab under the National Dairy Development Board, which it said confirmed the presence of animal fat in the ghee.
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