New Delhi: Raising alarm over what he described as an unchecked public health disaster, Aam Aadmi Party MP Raghav Chadha on Wednesday used the floor of the Rajya Sabha to expose widespread food adulteration across the country, warning that citizens are unknowingly consuming toxic substances on a daily basis.
Addressing the Upper House, Chadha said the crisis has gone far beyond isolated cases and has now become systemic.
“The issue is dangerous food adulteration. Poison is being openly sold in the market with fake labels claiming purity,” he said, adding that everyday food products are being marketed with misleading claims of health and nutrition.
He told Parliament that items consumed daily by millions — milk, spices, edible oils, packaged foods and beverages — are being mixed with harmful chemicals, unsafe additives, and excessive amounts of sugar, salt and saturated fats, while falsely being promoted as “healthy” and “energy-boosting.”
Listing specific examples, Chadha said, “Milk is being adulterated with urea and detergents, vegetables are injected with oxytocin, paneer contains starch and caustic soda, ice cream has detergent powder, fruit juices are laced with synthetic flavours and artificial colours, and spices are mixed with brick powder and sawdust.”
He further added, “Tea contains synthetic colors, chicken and poultry items contain anabolic steroids, and honey contains sugar syrup and yellow dye.”
Drawing attention to the human cost of adulteration, the AAP MP said the most affected are unsuspecting families. “Imagine a mother giving her child a glass of milk, thinking it contains calcium and protein, and that it will make her child healthy. She has no idea that she is feeding her child a dangerous mixture of urea and detergent,” Chadha said.
Quoting research data, he claimed the scale of adulteration is deeply disturbing. “Seventy-one percent of milk samples tested contained urea and 64 percent had neutralisers such as sodium bicarbonate,” he said, adding, “The country doesn’t even produce as much milk as is being sold in this country.”
He also highlighted that between 2014–15 and 2025–26, adulteration was detected in one out of every four food samples tested. “Between the years 2014-15 and 2025-26, in all the samples that were tested, adulteration was found in 25 percent of them. That means one in every four samples was adulterated. Who knows how many people fell ill, how many went to the hospital, and how many lost their lives?” he asked.
Chadha warned that even vegetables and medicines are unsafe. “Vegetables, which we buy thinking they are a storehouse of health, are being injected with oxytocin to make them look fresh and green. Oxytocin is a harmful chemical that causes diseases like dizziness, headaches, heart failure, infertility, and cancer,” he said.
The AAP leader also flagged an international contradiction, stating that products banned abroad continue to be sold in India. “Even more shocking is that products manufactured in India, but banned internationally, are still being sold here… because they contained cancer-causing pesticides. Those same spices are still being sold and bought in India in large quantities. We are forced to consume these products,” he said.
Calling food adulteration a “silent health emergency,” Chadha urged immediate government action and proposed reforms, including strengthening the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), upgrading testing laboratories, imposing stricter penalties, and introducing a public recall system.
