Before the January 25 revolution, Egypt was corrupt in most fields. One of the problems was the lack of monitoring of food industries. The owners of illegal, unlicensed factories weren't punished; they simply paid hush money. Of grave concern are the conditions in which milk is bottled or packaged in factories or even homes. Alexandria University examined samples of milk from the governorates of Cairo and Alexandria and discovered that more than 60 per cent were contaminated by formalin and hydrogen peroxide. According to the Alexandria University study, about 3 billion litres of unpackaged milk are polluted annually. Adulteration of milk means the removal of any of its components or the addition of any substance to it. There are two types of adulteration. The first type is natural adulteration, which involves changing the properties of milk by removing fat and adding water or whey milk. Chemical adulteration, the second type, involves adding ammonia, sodium bicarbonate and sodium hydroxide. The most dangerous of these chemicals is ammonia. Other kinds of chemical fraud include the addition of starch, gelatin, glue or flour to increase the viscosity of the milk. These chemicals can kill people very slowly, with repeated ingestion of this polluted milk. The consumer can eventually suffer from kidney failure and/or liver cancer or other types of cancer. “Some factories do not own their own farms. They take milk from other farms. The cows are milked automatically and the milk is transferred in coolers," says an unnamed official in the Association of Dairy Farmers. “Another source is more dangerous – milk collected from villages and people's homes. Preservative chemicals are often added to it and they are extremely dangerous. They include formaldehyde and caustic soda, that prevent the milk from going off. “You should cool the milk directly after milking, but many people don't have refrigerators in their homes, so they add such chemicals," the official adds. This milk is cheaper than milk from the farms, which is why the factories buy it. “I have cows in my home and I milk them twice every day. I sell it to my fellow villagers; I refuse to sell it to the factories. I don't add any chemicals or water, as I respect God," Sheikh Mohamed Abou Khadra, a farmer from near Awseem in Giza Governorate, told The Egyptian Gazette. “I collect milk from houses in my village and sell it to factories. I do not add any harmful chemicals, because I send it to the factories directly, but others add chemicals so it keeps for a long time, until it is manufactured or sold," says Salem Saleh, a farmer from el-Sharqia Governorate. “We, the old people, prefer the unpackaged milk because it is natural and doesn't contain any preservative materials. I buy it from a farmer I know," says Hajja Um Hassan, 55 years old. “I feed my sons on this milk but nowadays most children like the packaged milk," she adds. “Any factory wants to maximise its profits. This means factories manufacture as much milk as possible, which is why they add water and whey milk. So I only buy the unpackaged milk," says Nagwa Hamed, a housewife. “I am afraid of anything that hands have touched. That's why I buy pasteurised, not unpackaged milk," says Rasha Ayad, another housewife. “Pasteurisation kills most of bacteria which heating in our homes doesn't." Old people like the unpackaged milk, young people the pasteurised variety. Perhaps we shouldn't worry which is better; what matters is that, in the wake of the revolution, the new president must protect Egyptians from polluted foods and milk.
