Two samples of milk produced by Mother Dairy have been found to be substandard, and one of them contained detergent, a food watchdog official said on Tuesday. A Mother Dairy official denied the charges, saying the company conducts "stringent quality tests", and the substandard milk was wrongly attributed to it.

Ram Naresh Yadav, chief of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) department in Agra, said two samples were taken from Mother Dairy's collection centres in Bah tehsil, 70 km from Agra city, in November 2014.

"The samples were sent to the Lucknow laboratory which declared both of them substandard. The company challenged the results and demanded the samples be sent to the Kolkata lab, which too found them defective. In fact, the Kolkata lab found one sample contained detergent," Yadav told IANS.

However, a Mother Dairy official denied that the milk supplied in pouches was substandard.

"It is very unfortunate that the samples collected at the village level are being wrongly attributed to Mother Dairy," Sandeep Ghosh, business head for milk at Mother Dairy Fruit & Vegetable Pvt. Ltd., told IANS.

"We would like to clarify that at Mother Dairy, milk undergoes four levels of thorough testing at input, processing, dispatches and even at market level. Every tanker of milk reaching our plants passes a series of 23 stringent quality tests to check any deviation from defined parameters.

"These tests assist in detecting contamination of milk through water, urea, detergent, oil, etc. For any such adulteration, the milk is immediately rejected from further action. Only after securing clearance from all quality measures, the milk is then accepted for processing and re-examined after processing," Ghosh said.

The Mother Dairy official said that as a "responsible organisation", they follow "100 percent testing protocol rather than resorting to random testing procedures".

"To ensure only best and safe quality milk reaches our consumers, we make sure that every batch of milk is again tested before dispatch."

He also said Mother Dairy follows a "unique practice" of testing its own milk at retail points too.

Around 100 samples from the market are tested on a daily basis, thus ensuring that the products available are safe for consumption, Ghosh said.

The spokesperson said supplies were often rejected by the company if found to be substandard.

"The rejections are due to quality concerns and may vary. We rejected 10 milk tankers in December 2014. The rejected milk is not permitted inside our premises and returned back to suppliers," the official said.

Here is the complete statement released by Mother Dairy which explains the process of collection of milk, and also explains how the milk sample which was picked for testing did not belong to Mother Dairy:

"It is very unfortunate that the samples collected at village level are being wrongly attributed to Mother Dairy. The milk sample allegedly being reported is before it even reaches the chilling centre and cannot be attributed to the brand Mother dairy at all as it has not been tested or accepted as good quality for further processing. Here we would like to reiterate that as a process the milk is first pooled at the collection centre post which the collected milk is taken to the chilling centre where milk undergoes the required tests to check that it is free from any kind of adulterant and for % FAT and % SNF. If the milk is found not meeting the requisite standards, the milk is rejected. Only acceptable quality milk is then transported to the Mother Dairy factories and then retested before receiving the milk inside the factory for further processing. After processing, the milk is tested once again before dispatching to ensure that the milk reaching the consumer is safe."

