Tirupati laddu ghee adulteration row: What the lab reports say

A laboratory analysis has found adulteration in four samples of ghee supplied to the Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanam (TTD) in Andhra Pradesh in July 2024. The report by the Centre for Analysis and Learning in Livestock and Food (CALF) of the National Dairy Development Board noted that the content used to adulterate the ghee could include substances from soya bean, sunflower, rapeseed, olive, linseed, wheat germ, maize germ, cotton seed, fish oil, coconut, palm kernel fat, palm oil, beef tallow and lard.

Shyamala Rao, the Executive Officer of the TTD, said that the results were unfortunate and that the samples were adulterated with many kinds of fats including animal fats like tallow and lard. “Pure milk fat should have a reading between 95.68 to 104.32, but all our ghee samples had values around 20, which means the ghee supplied is highly adulterated,” he said.

However, multiple scientists TNM spoke to (all wanted to remain anonymous) said that the report shows there was adulteration, but what the adulterant was cannot be conclusively verified, they stated. One scientist pointed out that such results could also indicate that the cattle was underfed. This is a caveat that the CALF report also mentions.