Govt to review food safety law
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Friday January 22, 2016 15:25
This means that the ministry will be updating the law regulating food safety measures throughout the food supply chain, to protect public health from risks, which may arise as a result of consuming unhealthy food.
The chairperson of the National Food Board and director of health services, Dr Khumo Seipone, said the ministry has conducted a series of consultative processes, with the guidance of the National Food Control board.
“We found out that there is need for the ministry to review the Act, looking at what we are now as a country. The Act has not been reviewed since 1993. Some sections may remain irrelevant if an Act takes long without being reviewed,” said Seipone at a stakeholders meeting yesterday.
She said they have done their groundwork by engaging all the necessary stakeholders, and the main objective is to address gaps and weaknesses that are in the old Act.
“This means that we should present a prospective model of the Food Safety Authority including best practices, networking platforms among local food safety institutions – an example of the Chilean model,” she said.
Seipone said there was no food safety risk analysis provisions in the Food Control Act of 1993 for appropriate scientific decision making processes if the need arises.
For example, it is not based on risk assessment but rather it focuses on the final product, she said.
The chief health officer at MoH, Abia Sebaka, said a lot has changed since 1993 including changes in animal husbandry, increases in susceptible population, changes in lifestyle and customer demands, poor food control infrastructure and inadequate food legislation.
Meanwhile technical director for food intelligence for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) consultants, Nuri Gras, who has been engaged by MoH said it is important for the government to care about food consumption in the country.
“Many people die due to food poisoning. Therefore it is very important for the ministry to engage all the relevant stakeholders including vendors who sell food, so that they become aware of standards that will be required in the new Act. Again, I have found out that government needs to build two or three laboratories where regular tests will be done on food coming in and going out of the country,” Gras said.
She said there are many things required for a country to meet international standards.
Gras said even the feeds that are given to animals such as cows and goats need to be checked on how they could affect meat consumers. She advised government to coordinate the activities of all the public services related to food safety.
A recent inspection carried out in Gaborone revealed that a government supplier (known to this publication) has breached many safety requirements.
The company supplies government institutions with a variety of food items such as coffee/tea creamer, powdered drink, soup powder, jelly, custard and jam packaged in 25kg containers.
The inspection report shows that items such as coffee creamers, spices, custard powder and jelly were found to have expired, while the expiry date on other boxed coffee creamers was unreadable.
Recently Gaborone City Council also closed some shops after they found out that these shops were failing to meet the required standard for inspection.