The Government Food & Drugs/Analyst Department will be seeking to better position itself to comply with the United States’ Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) this year by moving to have its laboratories accredited so that tests carried out on foods targeting overseas markets can meet standards that obtain in the USA and in other parts of the world, according to Director of the Department Marlan Cole.
Signed into law by President Barack Obama in January 2011, the FSMA aims to ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by, among other things, containing contamination by exercising oversight targeting food imports.
Speaking with Stabroek Business on the work done by the Department in 2015 and some of its objectives for the current year, Cole said that the push for accreditation would also embrace the Inspectorate arm of the Department. It is expected that the laboratories will be accredited by year end and the Inspectorate in 2017.
Cole, meanwhile, told Stabroek Business that stricter enforcement procedures designed to protect local consumers against unsafe food, drugs, medical implements and cosmetic imports and upgrading the provisions of the Food and Drugs Act to take better account of contemporary global practices are also amongst the priorities which the Department has set itself for 2016. He acknowledged less than effective collaboration between his Department and the Customs and Trade Administration at the ports of entry. Cole says that the weakness of the collaborative mechanisms between the two agencies meant that 85 per cent of the goods entering the country through legitimate ports of entry and which ought to come to the attention of the Food & Drugs Analyst Department escape its attention. “The problem is that once we are unable to examine and pronounce on these imports before they leave the port of entry it becomes more difficult to track them afterwards,” Cole said.
And according to Cole, the Food & Drugs/Analyst Depart-ment will be paying “particular attention to suppressing the trade in sub-standard milk. Alluding to what he said was the prevalence of “mixing’ milk and retailing milk in plastic bags, Cole said that setting aside the health implications of the practice there were also concerns about packaging practices that denied consumers their “proper weight.”
Cole told Stabroek Business that this year vendors in the agro-processing sector offering products that were deficient in terms of packaging and labeling will also come on the Department’s radar.
“Apart from the issue of standards it is also a question of unfair competition for those local manufacturers who invest in proper labeling and packaging but must compete against those who do not,” Cole said.
While Cole says that the ability of the Food & Drugs/Analyst Department to perform all of its functions was still being affected by its resource limitations he said that during 2015 some progress had been made in enforcing regulations that required importers to produce documents from countries of origin certifying that the product (s) in question could be freely sold in that country.
