CHENNAI: Ahead of the Sabarimala season, the food safety department on Friday seized 8,000l of adulterated ghee from a wholesale dealer in T Nagar.

The seizure was made at a processing unit owned by Murugan and Sons Pvt Ltd. The ghee was packed, labelled and dispatched to various retailers across the state. It was from a retail shop that officials sniffed the spurious activity. "The ghee gave out an odour and was not of the right colour. We sent it to our lab for tests," said district food safety officer S Lakshmi Narayan.The sample was collected from Anna Nagar.

The 1kg ghee bottle had only 100g of ghee, while the rest was palm oil and vanaspati. "We traced the ghee to the godown in Kannamapet. Around 1,300 litres of palm oil and vanaspathi were seized, and we sealed the unit," said Narayan. The goods were worth more than Rs5 lakh.

