The Paneer Rush and a Battle With Fakes

The proliferation of adulterated cottage cheese points to a market on steroids. What is Big Dairy planning?

- Suneera Tandon

New Delhi's Okhla Mandi, a sprawling wholesale market, supplies fresh produce to vast swathes of homes and restaurants in the city. It is also home to half a dozen paneer or cottage cheese selling units.

Rows of neatly stacked paneer slabs line up the market's covered sheds. The slabs range from 200 grams to 5kg.

At New Haryana Paneer Bhandar, a store in the mandi, cottage cheese can be bought for ₹270 per kg. Neighbouring Malai Paneer Bhandar sells them at ₹240 a kg, to small restaurants. Branded and packaged paneer, in contrast, can cost double the price.

Some shopkeepers claimed to source the milk, used to make their paneer, from villages outside Delhi. But anyone who has followed the recent controversy around 'analogue' and adulterated paneer, would be more guarded. To the naked eye, they all look like the real thing. But are they?

In July, in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur, the state's food safety department seized 1,200 kgs of adulterated paneer and contaminated milk. In Gorakhpur, another city in the state, 2,500 kgs of adulterated paneer was discovered and destroyed. In June, Chandigarh's food safety officials uncovered approximately 450 kg of potentially harmful paneer during a raid.

"We use only milk we procure from our village in Mewat (in Haryana) for this paneer. Koi milawat nahin hai (There's no adulteration)," a sales executive at one of the stores in the mandi stressed, when asked about the purity of their products.

The proliferation of adulterated cottage cheese points to a market on steroids—there's a paneer rush—and companies, big and small, want to capitalize on it. The humble food from north Indian homes is now finding new consumers across the country, even in the south. Restaurants sell everything from the drab paneer tikka to fancier versions. Heard about pesto-stuffed grilled cottage cheese steak?