Big Boss, the popular Chinese restaurant in Tangra, was temporarily closed by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) on Wednesday after the civic body’s food safety wing seized around 500kg of stale raw chicken and prawn from a refrigerated box during an inspection, officials said.
The inspection was part of a drive across eateries, sweet shops and bakeries in Calcutta and several other places in Bengal, including Panagarh, Arambagh and Bhadreswar. Food safety department officials said they noted gross irregularities at many places during these inspections, including one instance where a sweet shop in Hooghly’s Arambagh was using Holi gulaal to colour sweets.
The raids across multiple restaurants and eateries across the state came a day after chief minister Suvendu Adhikari flagged concerns about adulteration while launching a statewide food safety week from September 1 to 8.
A senior official in the food safety wing of the KMC’s health department said the stale chicken and prawns at Big Boss were found in plastic packets and bags without tags indicating the packaging and expiry dates.
Some of the items had become frigid chunks that were difficult to remove from the packets because they had turned hard, suggesting months of refrigeration, the official said.
“Around 500kg of stale chicken and prawns were seized during the raid at Big Boss. Some samples were taken to laboratories for tests. The rest was taken to Dhapa in a mini-truck and buried in keeping with norms,” a senior official of the KMC’s health department said. “There were no tags showing dates of expiry on any of the packets containing chicken and prawn. We have decided to temporarily suspend the licence of Big Boss.”
One of the owners of Big Boss denied prolonged refrigeration. “We don’t have to store chicken or fish for long because of high consumption. Around 50-60kg of chicken and 20-30kg of fish are consumed every day. On weekends, it is even higher,” he told the television channel ABP Ananda.
KMC health department officials said the civic body’s food safety rules, which are aligned with those of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, prohibit the storing of prepared or semi-cooked food without FSSAI dating tags. Uncooked food and raw chicken should also have these tags, the officials said.
“The Big Boss owners are aware of the food-and-safety standards that need to be followed under the Food Safety and Standards Act. Fines can range from ₹50,000 to ₹3 lakh, and licences can be suspended in case of violations,” an official said.
On Tuesday, a raid by food safety officers at a restaurant in Madhyamgram, around 20km north of Calcutta, had led to the seizure of rotten raw chicken in refrigerators.
Around the time KMC officials inspected Big Boss, a separate team raided several eateries in Hooghly’s Arambagh. At a sweet shop, a team found Holi gulaal that was being passed off as artificial food-grade colour, said Jadunath Hembram, a food safety officer.
In April 2018, inspections in Calcutta and its adjoining districts had led to the busting of a racket that allegedly collected animal carcasses from municipal dump yards, chemically treated the rotten meat and sold it to restaurants and department stores.
Dining and Cooking