Staff Report
PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Food, Zahir Shah Toru has said that the provincial government has taken a revolutionary step to ensure the provision of safe, quality, and scientifically tested food to the public. The establishment of the province’s first-ever State-of-the-Art Provincial Food Testing Laboratory & Centre for Research, initiated under the special directives of Chief Minister Ali Amin Khan Gandapur, marks a significant milestone in KP’s journey towards food safety, public health, policy formulation, research, and interdepartmental cooperation.
He expressed these views on Wednesday while addressing an orientation and briefing session held for media representatives at the newly established laboratory in Hayatabad, Peshawar. Also present at the event were Director General of the KP Food Authority Wasif Saeed, Director Administration Abdur Rehman, Director Operations Akhtar Nawaz, Director Technical Dr Abdul Sattar Shah, and other officials.
The orientation session aimed to acquaint media personnel with the lab’s significance, facilities, and public utility. During the visit, the minister personally showed journalists various sub laboratories and advanced testing equipments in operation, while officials briefed them in detail on the machinery and testing capabilities available.
The media was informed that the project was completed under the management of the KP Food Safety & Halal Food Authority at a cost of Rs905 million. Designed in accordance with international Organization for standardization, the facility is the first of its kind in the province and comprises eight specialised and fully functional laboratories under one roof. It features online reporting, a centralised Management Information System (MIS), and Digitized traceability system integrated with public access tools.
Officials briefed that the laboratory is capable of conducting over 1,500 testing parameters across more than 100 food items. These include detection of hazardous adulterants, artificial colours, toxic chemicals, as well as microbiological testing for pathogens such as Salmonella, E. coli, Listeria, and moulds. Additionally, the lab can perform nutritional profiling, analysing fat, moisture, ash, and caloric value.
It is also equipped to test for antibiotic residues in milk and meat, as well as identifying meat speciation such as pork, donkey or dog for halal certification purposes. Other capabilities include heavy metals testing e.g., lead and arsenic in water and beverages.
In the brief Key high-tech equipment highlighted, in use includes:Gas Chromatography (GC),Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS),Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES)High and Ultra-High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC/UHPLC),Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR and specialised dairy and beverage analysers.
The lab is integrated with field offices of KP food authority across more than 20 districts which function as sample collection points. Data gathered from these samples will not only aid the Food Authority in ensuring food quality but will also be of critical use to departments such as Public Health, Agriculture, Livestock, Local Government, EPA, and Environment, helping identify sources of contamination and enabling targeted enforcement against substandard food units.
Minister Zahir Shah Toru further stated that the lab will also play a proactive role in national and international collaborations related to food fortification, nutrition programmes, and scientific research, ultimately paving the way for advancements in food safety.
He stressed that the government’s aim is not only enforcement but the development of a sustainable, transparent, and people-friendly system for food safety in the province.
Concluding his address, the minister lauded the role of the media and said, “The media is a vital stakeholder in raising public awareness. ‘Safe Food, Healthy People’ is our mission and the Food Authority is working earnestly to realise it.”
