The Government Analyst-Food and Drug Department (GA-FDD) yesterday warned the public against purchasing “misleading” brands of sweetened condensed milk, which are currently being sold on the local market.
The milk, according to a GA-FDD press release, is being sold under the names “Royal Chef Sweetened Condensed filled milk,” “Evaporated Creamer” and “Lait Concentre’ Sucre.”
The GA-FDD said that members of the National Food Safety and Control Committee across the country have been informed of the issue and were advised to take the necessary action against the deceptive products. “The department is hereby informing all importers and distributors to recall deceptively labelled milk and to surrender same to the department for destruction,” the GA-FDD warned.
In its release, the agency said the milk or milk product is constituted from animal source and might contain a picture of a cow. “The label on the evaporated milk cannot depict a pictorial representation of a cow and must carry a declaimer ‘not suitable for children under 2 years’. Such a declaimer is necessary because the digestive system of children is not sufficiently developed to process its content and this amount to a very serious public issue,” it noted.
According to the Guyana Food and Drugs Act, Chapter 34.03, it is a violation for milk products with replaced or modified fat, which impacts on the character and composition of such products to be erroneously and frequently labelled as milk.
“The label of filled milk should not bear any graphics that will in any way indicate that the milk is from a dairy source or containing milk fat,” the release said.
The GA-FDD added that it now has access to a Gas Chromatograph (GC) instrument, which allows for all milk being imported into Guyana to be sampled and analysed in order to determine the “fatty acid profile”.
It urged customers to read labels carefully before purchasing and to ensure that the replaced source of fat is declared in the list of ingredients and the product should accordingly be labelled “filled milk”. “The label should also carry the statement “not suitable for infants,” the release said.
