Chennai: Amidst the row over animal fat including beef fat allegedly having been used in the ghee used in the preparation of laddu prasadam served to devotees in Tirupati temple, a dairy company in Tamil Nadu, which had supplied ghee, to Tirupati Tirumala Devasthanam, has denied the charge.
The authorities in Andhra Pradesh had alleged that A R Dairy based in Dindigul in south Tamil Nadu had not complied with the quality instructions and samples from the ghee supplied by it had confirmed the presence of animal fats.
However, on Friday, two representatives of the private dairy firm denied that the ghee supplied by them to the TTD was impure or substandard. “Even in June and July we had supplied ghee that was certified by FSSAI and AGMARK to the TTD. Their were no complaints at all,” one of the representatives said.
The company said it had supplied four truck loads of ghee during June and July to the TTD. “There were no issues,” the dairy firm’s representative told journalists but added, that the company had stopped supply thereafter. Standard Operating Procedure was followed and samples were tested by government recognised laboratory before the ghee was despatched.
The private firm said it has been in the business of dairy for the past 25 years and were supplying milk products to numerous institutions and there were no complaints about the quality.
In a related development, representatives of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board on Friday inspected the premises of A R Dairy and lifted samples of ghee as well as water discharged from the plant. The officials said they would get the ghee samples tested and based on the lab reports take further course of action.
