KP to have Central Food Testing Laboratory

PESHAWAR: Minister for Food Zahir Shah Toru was briefed on Wednesday that the Central Food Testing Laboratory being set up in Hayatabad was designed to test a wide variety of food items to ensure compliance with national and international food safety standards.

An official handout said that he received the briefing during his visit to the under-construction laboratory, which is a flagship project of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Food Safety & Halal Food Authority.

During the visit, Director General Wasif Saeed briefed the minister on the ongoing civil work, the deployment of advanced food testing equipment, and the laboratory’s readiness to support scientific food safety protocols across the province.

The state-of-the-art facility is being outfitted with cutting-edge machinery, including Milko Scan, Meat Testing Lab, CDR LAB, P-NIR, IDEX Solution, ELISA Reader, and incubators, which are already functional. Additional sophisticated devices such as TDS Meter, iCheck Chroma, Sonicator, Laminar Flow Hood, Autoclave, pH Meter, HPLC, UHPLC, Spectrophotometer, PCR, Proximate NIR, and BAX Q7 are installed and will soon be fully operational.

The laboratory will have specialized systems to detect halal and non-halal ingredients in food products.Speaking on the occasion, Zahir Shah Toru expressed satisfaction with the lab’s partial functionality, noting that the project was now in its final stages.

He announced that Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur would soon inaugurate the facility.“This is the first-of-its-kind high-tech food testing laboratory in Pakistan, and a major step toward strengthening scientific food regulation in the province,” the minister said, adding that 12 mobile food testing laboratories were already operational and providing services across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The minister reiterated the provincial government’s commitment to ensuring safe, healthy, and high-quality food for all citizens, stating, “Healthy food is the foundation of a healthy society.”

He emphasized that the establishment of the static laboratory would not only improve quality control at production units but would also raise awareness among stakeholders about food safety standards.The minister said that the provincial government was working to equip the food authority with modern and robust testing facilities.