Ludhiana ghee raid: 675 kg expired ghee destroyed, 3,540 kg held

Food safety officials in Ludhiana, Punjab, destroyed about 675 kg of expired desi ghee and detained another 3,540 kg of ghee as suspect stock during an inspection of a ghee factory in the city's Kailash Nagar area on Saturday, October 24, 2026. The inspection was carried out by the Food Safety Wing of the district Health Department as part of a festive-season drive. Officials sent five samples of ghee and one sample of mustard oil to a government laboratory, and said that whether the detained ghee is adulterated will depend on the test results.

Ghee is more than a cooking fat in Indian homes. It goes into daily meals, into festival sweets and into the lamps and offerings of household worship, and in many families it is still seen as the purest of foods. That trust is exactly why ghee is a target for cheating. Demand rises sharply in the weeks around Diwali and the wedding season, and loose ghee sold without a clear label or expiry date is hard for a buyer to judge by sight or smell.

Ludhiana's Civil Surgeon, Dr Ramandeep Kaur, said the department is running special surveillance during the festive period because demand for sweets, dairy products and edible oils goes up at this time, and that there would be no compromise on public health. The Kailash Nagar inspection is one part of that district-wide drive.

Two different problems were found at the unit, and it helps to keep them apart. The 675 kg destroyed on the spot was stock past its expiry date, which officials did not need a laboratory to judge. The much larger 3,540 kg has only been detained. It has not been declared adulterated or unsafe. Under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, it is the laboratory analysis of a sample that decides whether a food meets the legal standard, and the firm will have the right to respond once the reports come in. Until then, it would be wrong to treat the detained ghee as fake.

The share of loose ghee in the detained stock, more than 3,400 kg of the 3,540 kg, is worth noting for households. Loose ghee is usually cheaper, but it carries no batch number, no manufacturer's address and no "best before" date that a buyer can check, so a consumer has little way to trace where it came from if something goes wrong.

Short-term: The detained ghee cannot be sold while the samples are tested, and the expired stock has been removed from the market. Buyers in Ludhiana are likely to see more such checks at dairies, sweet shops and factories through the festive weeks.

Long-term: If the laboratory finds the samples substandard or unsafe, the firm could face penalties or prosecution under the food safety law. Repeated festive-season seizures across states also add pressure for regular, year-round testing of dairy fats rather than drives timed to the festivals.

Who is affected: Households in and around Ludhiana that buy ghee for cooking, sweets and worship; sweet shops and caterers who buy loose ghee in bulk; and the dairy units whose stock and licences depend on the test results.

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