Travancore Devaswom Board, food safety department lock horns

Thiruvananthapuram: The Food Safety Commissionerate and the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) are engaged in a slanging match over the quality of raw materials used for the preparation of appam and aravana at the Sabarimala temple. The commisisonarate maintained that the High Court had asked them to keep a close tab on the raw materials used for the preparation of prasadam at Sabarimala. Commissioner Veena N. Madhavan in a statement asked the TDB officers not to spread rumours.

 "The report that 'modakam' and 'avil' were taken away by the food safety officers for inspection are baseless," she said. These reports were part of a deliberate move to undermine the operations of the commisisonerate, Ms Madhavan said.
The blame game started with the commissionerate issuing instructions to the TDB not to use cardamom after a test of the samples revealed the presence of artificial colours that could cause cancers and other stomach diseases.

This provoked Dewaswom Minister Kadakamapally  Surendran and Dewaswom Board president A. Padmakumar to say that the timing of the decision gave room for suspicion. The officials were causing inconvenience to the pilgrims, they said. 
The food safety officials had reportedly found the presence of tartrazine yellow and brilliant blue additives which are used in tandem to impart green colour to cardamom during the tests conducted at the analytical lab at Pampa.  This was later confirmed by the NABL-accredited lab in Thiruvananthapuram.