Consumer complaints that unpackaged powdered milk being offered for sale to consumers in shops and markets is being ‘mixed’ with flour to ‘push up’ the profit margins of shopkeepers and vendors have led to calls from the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department for the milk to be “bagged and labelled” before being sold to consumers.
Director of the Food and Drugs Department Marilyn Collins told Stabroek Business in a telephone interview earlier this week that while consumer complaints about milk being mixed with flour had been brought to the attention of the department, effective investigations into these complaints were difficult to pursue since the ‘contaminated’ milk bore no label indicating the source from which it had been bought. “The problem that arises is that since the milk is not being sold in packages with labels that identify the seller it is difficult to make a case,” Ms. Collins said.
Powdered milk is imported into Guyana from New Zealand in bulk and the imported milk is then opened and repackaged by retailers for sale to local consumers. The imported milk currently retails at around $600 per pound. Stabroek Business understands that there have been at least three increases in milk prices this year.
While the Food and Drugs Department is empowered under the law to take legal action in cases where milk sold to consumers is found to be mixed with flour Ms. Collins said that the Food and Drugs Department would prefer to work with shopkeepers and vendors in an effort to eradicate the practice. “We definitely would not want to resort to the seizure of goods even though we are empowered to take such action under the law,” Ms. Collins said.
According to Ms. Collins the department was prepared to accept makeshift labels stuck to the bags in which the milk was being sold as a means of identifying the seller.
However, vendors in the Bourda Market with whom Stabroek Business spoke said that the eradication of the practice will be difficult despite the call for labelling by the Food and Drugs Department. A shopkeeper who retails the powdered milk told Stabroek Business that the preoccupation with increasing their profit margins was driving some retailers to resort increasingly to the practice of “mixing” the milk before retailing it to consumers. The shopkeeper said that the practice had become widespread and that some consumers had resorted to demanding that they “taste” the milk before making the purchase.
Another vendor told Stabroek Business that the requirement of labelling and packaging could prove difficult to enforce unless the Food and Drugs Department was prepared to police the system. He pointed out that insofar as only some retailers were prepared to pursue labelling and packaging the system was unlikely to be effective since it would still be difficult to determine the source of the contaminated milk.
Asked to comment on a recent observation made by Ms. Collins that the practice of ‘mixing’ powdered milk appeared to have coincided with the liberalization of flour imports the vendor told Stabroek Business that this appeared to be the case. He said that it was “definitely true” that the removal of restrictions of flour importation had resulted in what he described as “all kinds of flour” being imported into Guyana. The vendor also pointed out that the high cost of powdered milk when compared with the cost of flour had led to the practice of mixing the two and retailing the mixture as powdered milk.
While the labelling and repackaging recommendation made by Ms. Collins is designed to help identify delinquent retailers, this approach will impose additional responsibilities on a Department that already faces a shortage of personnel, The Food and Drugs Department Director explained that any labelling and packaging systems put in place by retailers would first have to secure the permission of the Department and that such permission would have to be attended by an inspection procedure de-signed to ensure compliance with minimum health standards.
One of the vendors with whom Stabroek Business spoke said that it was unlikely that retailers would seek to add to the cost of their operations by implementing “elaborate” labelling and repackaging operations.
He said that the current practice of ‘mixing’ powdered milk was a simple one that was done on the premises where the milk was offered for sale and that it was simply a matter of the vendor knowing the respective quantities of each commodity that had to be mixed in order to retain a sufficiently high milk content in the product being offered for sale.
According to the vendor while it was likely that the ‘fraud’ would eventually be discovered by the consumer, the problem of making a case in circumstances where the product was not directly traceable to a particular retailer made it difficult for the Food and Drug Department to pursue its investigations effectively.
