Beware! Food Inspector Reveals Pala Sweets Contain Formalin in Kembangan Jakbar

JAKARTA - The Jakarta Food and Drug Supervisory Agency (BBPOM) together with the West Jakarta City Government found food containing formalin during a sudden inspection (sidak) of food at a supermarket in the Kembangan area, Tuesday, December 23.

The Mayor of West Jakarta Iin Mutmainnah said that the findings came from the results of testing 16 food samples sold at the supermarket. From the results of the examination, one item was found to be positive for formalin, namely pala candy.

"But there are also unsafe ones, pala sweets. This pala candy actually contains formalin," said Iin after being asked by Antara, Tuesday, December 23.

The findings were quite surprising because the product was visibly normal and did not show any suspicious signs.

"This is unexpected by us in general. The appearance is also not visible. The public also does not know for sure, as long as they think that formalin must be in tahu or tempe, but this is in pala candy," he said.

Based on these findings, Iin appealed to the public to be more careful in choosing food, especially processed products that look bright and attractive.

"We need to be more careful when we buy food that is like that. It looks bright, but then it needs to be checked again. This needs caution," he said.

Iin also advised the public to use food safety inspection applications provided by the government, such as BPOM Mobile and the Fresh Food Information System of Plant Origin (SIPSAT) owned by the Ministry of Agriculture.

"Now people can check before buying. It's not difficult, you can check it directly on the application. Download it on your respective HP, it's very easy," he said.

In addition to the formalin findings, Head of the Jakarta POM Headquarters Sofiyani Chandrawati said that his party also found a number of other violations, namely three items of damaged products and two items of products with distribution permits that are no longer valid.

"We found three damaged product items, then we also found products with expired shelf life, two items," said Sofiyani.

He added that the raid was not only focused on testing food content, but also assessing the quality of self-service management, ranging from planning the products sold, storing food ingredients in refrigerators, to presenting products in showcases.

"Management, for example, starts from planning the products sold, then storage in the refrigerator, to the product itself," said Sofiyani.