By Arpan Chaturvedi and Dhwani Pandya
MUMBAI, Aug 15 (Reuters) – Maharashtra state’s food safety chief has intensified a crackdown on the food and grocery industries, suspending the permits of 12 warehouses of Indian grocery giants Eternal, Swiggy and Zepto after finding cockroach infestations and other unhygienic conditions.
The latest raids targeting the “quick commerce” sector, where companies deliver groceries within minutes, come after the state’s new food safety head, Tukaram Mundhe, 51, shut some of Mumbai’s most popular eateries for poor hygiene.
Reports of food contamination are common in India’s local eateries, and Maharashtra’s drive and Mundhe are gathering social media attention because historically there has been little enforcement of food safety standards.
Earlier this week, Mundhe’s department shut four Domino’s outlets, a brand that is India’s biggest fast-food chain and typically considered to have stricter safety protocols.
The state’s FDA said in a statement on Friday that it had inspected 86 establishments, issued 60 “improvement notices”, and suspended the permits of five warehouses of Eternal’s Blinkit, five of Zepto’s, and two of Swiggy’s Instamart.
Swiggy and Eternal declined to comment, and Zepto did not respond to queries from Reuters.
Swiggy and Zepto have roughly 1,100 delivery outlets each in India, and Blinkit has 2,200, according to Datum Intelligence.
At one of the food storage facilities of Blinkit, India’s biggest quick commerce company, according to the release from Mundhe’s office on Friday, inspectors found a cockroach infestation and rotten vegetables, and inspections at other sites turned up rodent droppings and unhygienic conditions.
At a Zepto warehouse in Nashik in northwestern Maharashtra state, delivery staff were entering storage areas in street footwear, raising cross-contamination risks, the state FDA statement also said.
Other photos shared by the state FDA showed rusted and dirty storage racks, with cockroaches crawling around food items.
“We will not tolerate any playing with public health,” Mundhe said in the FDA statement, warning of tougher action against unsafe food preparation and unhygienic food storage.
(Reporting by Arpan Chaturvedi and Dhwani Pandya; Writing by Aftab Ahmed and Aditya Kalra; Editing by Tom Hogue)
