Public Health Minister Dr George Norton’s pronouncement last week about an intended clampdown on the sale of ‘irregularly’ packaged and unlabelled goods is not the first declaration of its kind by government in recent years. Successive political administrations have been railing against the practice by some retailers of acquiring bulk packages of food items – powdered milk is the one that comes easiest to mind – then repackaging those items into smaller quantities under conditions that do not conform to the safety and health standards that consumers are entitled to expect in the handling of food. That, however, is as far as the authorities have gone. There has never been any serious and sustained effort at enforcement.
As we understand it the nation is once again being put on notice that proper packaging and labelling will now be seriously enforced as a prerequisite to offering items for sale. It appears that this latest edict extends to items like rice and peas, and perhaps a host of others, which, up until now, have been packaged and repackaged in ordinary plastic bags without labels, and sold at retail outlets ranging from established supermarkets to corner shops across the country without the slightest official fuss. This, according to Dr Norton is about to change. What will also change is the long-standing trading practice, particularly among small traders, of being able to offer what has come to be described as ‘loose’ items for sale. That will have economic consequences for the retail businesses of small operators.
The Government of Guyana, of course, is perfectly in order to want to protect consumers from the possible ill effects of foods being presented for sale under conditions that might compromise public safety, including items of food packaged under conditions that might be unsafe, unhygienic, or else labelled in a manner that fails to provide all of the requisite information that allows for the making of informed purchasing choices. This discrepancy, incidentally, is not limited to small shops but in some instances extends to large supermarkets.
While it is all well and good for officialdom to give notice of intention to come down on distributors and retailers who continue to demonstrate an absence of mindfulness of operating within the aforementioned regulations, government has not itself provided anything even remotely resembling a real determination to ensure the effective enforcement of those regulations designed to discourage delinquency. This has led to a healthy measure of public cynicism.
In the unrelated but relevant instance of the recent ‘Lailac’ infant formula, for example, the problem, in the first place, stems from official failure to stop the importation of the product at the port of entry, leaving the enforcing agency, the Government Analyst Food & Drug Department (GAFDD) with the task of chasing the product down long after it had been imported, stored in bonds and even found its way into the retail chain. Interestingly, no one in authority has appeared particularly keen to pronounce on how the formula got past the port of entry without the ‘say so’ of the GAFDD in the first place.
What the Minister’s recent pronouncement does not provide is an explanation as to how a historically under-resourced GAFDD is to effectively carry out these clearly arduous monitoring responsibilities. When last we checked the GAFDD had a total of seven food inspectors whose responsibilities already cover the monitoring of ports of entry, (which it is hopelessly incapable of doing on its own especially given its present level of resources), inspecting factories and monitoring distribution outlets for goods which, for one reason or another, ought not to be offered for sale. The serious lack of capacity at the GAFDD is manifested in the fact that having since February this year directed that the aforementioned ‘Lailac’ infant formula be withdrawn from the market, up to relatively recently it was reportedly still being offered for sale.
Over several years, this newspaper’s exchanges with the GAFDD regarding its capacity to effectively enforce responsibilities relating particularly to protecting consumers against the likelihood of purchasing foods which, for one reason or another, might be harmful to their health, have led us to the conclusion that it has become seriously compromised on account of a lack of official attention to the importance of incrementally enhancing its capacity. This, at a time when the more focused attention on food safety in an era of increasing globalization requires Guyana – as indeed it does other countries – to properly equip itself to efficiently manage its food safety concerns, not only for the sake of protecting its own population but also in order to ensure that its exports meet with the increasingly demanding standards set by those countries that provide our major markets.
It is the dichotomy between the Public Health Minister’s announcement regarding a more rigorous inspection regime for packaging and labelling practices on the one hand, and what we know to be the patent lack of capacity in the present circumstances to realize anything even remotely resembling proper enforcement on the other, that is the burden of our concern. Frankly, in circumstances where the Minister’s pronouncement remains unmatched by indications of an attendant intention to significantly enhance the capacity of the GAFDD, it becomes vulnerable to charges of doing little more than whistling in the wind.
