Agora fined for selling butter produced without milk

A Dhaka court dealing with food frauds today (6 October) fined Tk4 lakh to Agora Limited, a prominent retail chain, for selling butter that a government laboratory test confirmed was produced from raw materials other than milk.

The court of Judge Kaisunnahar Surma also fined the firm Neofarmers Tk8 lakh for producing the butter marketed as "Gawa Ghee." The butter comes in a jar with a special mention on its label, "Naturally Grown, Honestly Packed."

The case that resulted in the fines named two accused — Muallem A Chowdhury of Agora and Tamzid Siddiq Spondon of Neofarmers, a start‑up that promised to replace adulterated food.

"Can you imagine producing butter without milk? They did it. There was no milk used in producing the butter," said Nargis Akter, a food inspector at Dhaka North City Corporation, who filed the case on 18 August.

Collected on 27 July from the Benaroshi Polli branch in Mirpur, the sample of the butter was certified as substandard by the Dhaka South City Corporation food analyst three days later.

The butter failed the standard test on four of the six parameters.

One of the parameters required butter to contain 99.70 percent milk fat. But the butter sold by Agora had no milk fat at all.

The saponification test requires butter to have a minimum reading of 218. But the butter tested scored 198. The presence of iodine was found to be 92.07, almost three times the maximum permitted level of 35. The peroxide level per mg of oxygen was found to be 3.12, almost four times the maximum permitted level of 0.8.

Low saponification levels could be a strong indication of adulteration, for it implies the presence of vegetable fat, which has a longer carbon chain than milk fat, according to food experts.

Excessive milk‑fat consumption could lead to obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and inflammation in the body.

High levels of iodine, on the other hand, could signal the presence of other oils, food experts said, adding that the chemical element could be used to soften butter.

High peroxide levels particularly indicate the product's low quality and rancidity, food experts said, adding that consumption of food with high peroxide levels could lead to atherosclerosis, a disease involving the build‑up of fat in and on artery walls, blocking blood flow.

Nargis said that Agora tried to hide the identity of the producer of the butter by refusing to give its details sought officially in a letter.

Agora Limited is a joint venture between Swedish firm Brummer & Partners and Bangladeshi company Rahimafrooz.