Pills in the cake; Referral of the issue to the FATA police

The Food and Drug Administration says the presence of pills in school cakes in three provinces could be a safety issue. The Ministry of Education denied issuing a circular to avoid eating the cake. The Ministry of Health said it was not within its authority to investigate the reasons for the issue.

Pills discovered in students' cakes; pills that may be psychotropic, addictive, and poisonous. This is news that has been circulating on social media since Tuesday, December 8. A worrying issue that has been observed in three provinces, but no official department or authority has taken responsibility for the response or confirmed the root of the problem.

The news is limited to three or four cases of cake containing pills, but they are contradictory and unofficial. The Ministry of Education denies issuing a circular to schools not to use cakes contaminated with pills. The Director General of Health and Wellness of the Ministry of Education says, we do not know the truth of the matter, but we have informed the Ministry of Health of the reports received from three provinces.

Tasnim news agency, citing residents of Chabahar, Konarak, and Saravan in Sistan and Baluchestan, reported that pills were found in chocolate, wafers, and cakes. According to the news agency and the public relations statement of a food manufacturer, the first case was observed in Bandar Abbas.

Behrouz Dehghan, head of the Chabahar Health Center, told Tasnim that such a case was first seen in Konarak, and after cases were reported in Chabahar, all suspicious cakes were collected from the city level at the prosecutor's suggestion: "We still don't think this was done by the factories, but we have collected all the products from the trade units."

Khabar Online quoted the chairman of the board of directors of the Iranian Food Industry Associations Association as saying that a warehouse of suspicious cakes had been sealed and wrote: "... Considering that the cakes were contaminated with pills in the border provinces, it was probably done with the intention of smuggling psychotropic pills..."

Kianoush Jahanpour, a spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration, says: "The presence of pills in cakes and food products seems to be a rumor and a security issue, and no precise documentation has been observed or reported for this issue."

Jahanpour added that anyone familiar with the food production process knows that such a thing is not possible in the mechanized production of cakes and wafers: "This is not a safety and health issue, and of course the FATA police and security police will look into the matter."

The spokesperson for the Food and Drug Administration asked people to provide documentation in this regard for review: "Many people who have made this claim have not provided information so far. This claim has also been made for various companies and has been addressed more in one province, while the products in question were produced outside this province and have been sent to the entire country."

Suspicious cakes and “psychological insecurity”

Fatemeh Norouzian, Public Relations Director of Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences, says that 30 samples of pills found in 12 food companies were sent to us by the public, none of which are identical: "The samples sent to this university were all open and it cannot be confirmed whether the presence of pills or capsules in the product came from the place of production."

She says that no cases of poisoning have been observed yet, and that 100 cartons of various products were randomly checked, but none contained any foreign objects. Ms. Norouzian considers the issue to be unethical behavior that causes psychological insecurity in society.

According to the president of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences, it is still unclear whether the students' cakes contained pills or Smarties. The university's public relations department also emphasized that the issue is suspicious, and in only one case, a family in Saravan found two white pills in their student's cake: "The cake had been opened during inspection... The matter was immediately investigated, and even the trade union unit that sold the cake was inspected, but nothing else was found."

In the latest reactions, the Khuzestan General Directorate of Education denied the existence of cakes containing pills in the province's schools, but the police information website quoted the head of the Hormozgan Anti-Narcotics Police as saying: "A few cakes containing a small number of pills were discovered in a Nissan vehicle, and investigations are ongoing."

Source: DW