Grocery apps accused of selling deadly dhatura for human consumption

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State health authorities intervene to stop marketing of poisonous Dhatura seeds for human consumption with wipes on all available inventories and suspension of vendors on the platform.

Karnataka Food Safety and Drug Administration Department has suspended food licences of Amazon, Swiggy Instamart and Big Basket in a big regulatory crackdown. The agencies found that toxic Dhatura (thorn apple) fruits and seeds were marketed and sold on food marketplaces as they were listed as edible on Amazon, Swiggy Instamart and Big Basket; some Dhatura contact papers even sported invalid Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) registration numbers.

Also known as Datura stramonium, the plant holds potentially lethal amounts of hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids and can cause severe neurological disturbances, hallucinations, coma or death if taken untreated, the toxicological analysis of dried plant indicated. The plant, used in religious rituals (puja) and original Ayurvedic formulations in India, had found its way in the quick-commerce app's catalog under the groceries category, an algorithmic error contributed. A child was found to have taken it when a Dhatura fruit was delivered by a quick-commerce team, owing to a glitch, authorities said. This has now brought attention from the state's authorities to its improper categorization.

In an emergency hearing the state regulator found the explanations provided by the platforms to be unsatisfactory and hence barred the companies from selling or advertising Dhatura products for human consumption. The government further has suspended the central and state food licences held by the platforms and also suspended the licences of third party vendors that supply the poisonous plant to dark stores and aggregation centres extent stations. A quick-commerce business failed to adequately validate on its software-driven inventory system the non-food ritualistic items that are sold alongside the safe edible food goods as part of its product mix.

As state authorities insist on a chain-of-command compliance report before considering licence revocation, e-commerce is time-sensitive to patch its automated listing pipelines. The sector needs to enforce human-in-the-loop for botanicals and dangerous items, a mandatory (Not for Human Consumption) disclaimer for non-edible trady items and revamp dark-store verification so that the lethal errors never happen again, beyond the doorstep.

✍️Aditya Sharma

Scholar from St. Xavier's College Mumbai, INDIA