A restaurant kitchen can look immaculate from the dining room. A milk tanker can look like any other on the highway. A packet of paneer can carry a familiar brand name.
The problem begins where the consumer cannot see.
Inside warehouses, kitchens, dairies and processing units, food-safety officers are looking for what a label cannot reveal: expired products, poor refrigeration, unsafe handling, adulteration and conditions in which food can become a public-health risk.
Across India, 2025 and 2026 have seen food-safety enforcement move beyond the familiar pre-Diwali raid. Surprise inspections, laboratory testing, licence suspensions, seizures and destruction of unsafe food are becoming part of wider state-level campaigns.
At the centre of one of the most visible crackdowns is Tukaram Mundhe, Maharashtra’s Food and Drug Administration commissioner.
But his campaign is one part of a wider shift, with officers such as Roshan Jacob in Uttar Pradesh, T Shubhamangala in Rajasthan and Kanwalpreet Brar in Punjab approaching food safety through enforcement, surveillance, testing and education.
Maharashtra: Tukaram Mundhe takes the fight inside the kitchen
When Tukaram Mundhe took charge of Maharashtra’s FDA in May 2026, inspections became a public affair.
Between 25 May and 31 July, the department inspected 3,137 hotels, restaurants, eateries and other establishments. It suspended 165 licences and seized or destroyed 28.66 lakh kg of unsafe food valued at Rs 55.72 crore.
Mundhe has led the suspension of food permits of four Domino’s and one Pizza Hut outlet in recent weeks, and has also targeted cricket clubs, hotels and well-known restaurants in over 3,000 raids. Photograph: (X/Tukaram_IndIAS)
The inspections did not stop at small eateries. FDA teams visited restaurants, dairies, hotel kitchens, warehouses, canteens and food businesses connected to delivery platforms.
In August, the department inspected 86 establishments involved in online food sales and delivery, issuing 60 improvement notices and suspending 14 licences linked to platforms including Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart.
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FDA Maharashtra has launched grievance redressal portal for citizens. It is AI enabled platform, having auto assignment, auto escalation and built in accountability with traceability features . https://t.co/597si71Z6E#TukaramMundhe#FDA
— Tukaram Mundhe (@Tukaram_IndIAS) July 15, 2026
The violations have ranged from poor storage and refrigeration to sanitation failures and expired products. Five restaurants at Mumbai Cricket Association premises, for instance, had their licences suspended after inspections found problems involving food storage, handling, refrigeration and sanitation.
On 20 August, Mundhe issued another warning, this time to consumers, advising them against buying loose or unsealed edible oil because of the risks of adulteration, unsafe packaging and the absence of proper quality controls.
The argument, then, is no longer simply about conducting more raids. It is about how aggressively a regulator should act when it believes public health is at risk.
Uttar Pradesh: Roshan Jacob takes adulteration to scale
In Uttar Pradesh, Roshan Jacob was appointed Secretary and Commissioner of the Food Safety and Drug Administration Department in September 2025.
Her first major test came with the Diwali season.
From 8 to 17 October 2025, the state ran a special enforcement campaign involving 6,075 inspections and 2,740 raids. Teams collected 3,767 samples and seized 3,548 quintals of adulterated or suspicious material worth about Rs 4.97 crore. Another 1,871 quintals of harmful material, valued at Rs 2.89 crore, was destroyed.
The seizures showed how adulteration travels through everyday food. In different districts, officials intercepted paneer, khoya, sweets, milk products, oils and ghee. At one point, 4,040 kg of khoya was seized on NH-34, while 910 cartons of adulterated sweets were intercepted at a Barabanki toll point.
The important part was what came next: the state said market surveillance would continue beyond the festival, rather than allowing enforcement to disappear with the Diwali calendar.
Rajasthan: The answer is not only punishment
Rajasthan’s Food Safety Commissioner T Shubhamangala has taken a different route alongside enforcement: train the people who handle food before violations happen.
On 17 March 2026, more than 30,000 food-business operators and related workers were trained on the first day of a two-day programme under the state’s “Shuddh Aahar–Milavat Par Vaar” campaign. The target was 50,000 people.
The trainees were not limited to restaurant owners. They included anganwadi workers, mid-day meal staff, government hostel employees, jail kitchen workers, hotel and dhaba operators and street-food vendors.
Rajasthan has also been working towards digital inspections and wider access to food testing, including mobile laboratories, bringing testing closer to producers and sellers rather than relying only on central laboratories. Photograph: (economictimes)
It changes the question from How many adulterators can we catch? to another one: How many unsafe practices can we prevent?
Rajasthan has also been working towards digital inspections and wider access to food testing, including mobile laboratories, bringing testing closer to producers and sellers rather than relying only on central laboratories.
Punjab: Following milk from farm to market
Punjab’s Kanwalpreet Brar has focused on one of the state’s most important food chains: dairy.
On 7 and 8 May 2026, Punjab carried out a statewide milk-sampling drive. Teams collected 204 samples from dairy farms, milk collection centres, processing units and retail outlets across urban and rural areas.
The results showed why sampling matters. Of the 204 samples tested, 68 failed quality checks and one was found unsafe for drinking. The department subsequently launched a statewide paneer-sampling drive, collecting 211 samples from dairies, processing units and retailers.
Kanwalpreet Brar, Punjab executed an intensive statewide milk-sampling drive on May 6 and 7, 2026, collecting 204 samples to crack down on milk adulteration. Photograph: (punjab itribune online)
Brar has also stressed education, asking food-safety officers to help businesses understand hygienic handling and storage rather than relying only on penalties.
The bigger fight is the invisible one
The four approaches are different.
Mundhe has made inspections highly visible. Jacob has demonstrated what statewide surveillance can uncover. Shubhamangala is pairing enforcement with training and technology. Brar is following a food chain, milk and dairy through repeated sampling.
Food safety begins long before a meal reaches the table. It involves the tanker carrying milk, the warehouse storing beverages, the kitchen refrigerator, the paneer-processing unit, the street-food cart and increasingly, the warehouse from which a ten-minute delivery is dispatched.
That is why the most important number may not be the number of raids.
It is whether the next consumer eventually stops having to wonder what is really on the plate.
