‘Fake food’ importers evade jail time

May 04, 2017 News

… as Food and Drug Dept lacks prosecution capacity

Both of these labels are misleading, using ‘Jack’ brand

Despite there being large amounts of fake and potentially harmful foods on the local market, successful prosecution of errant importers is rare.

This has resulted in a frightening scenario where many uncaring businesses continue to operate without apprehension.

Marlan Cole, Director of the Government-Analyst Food and Drug Department (GA-FDD), is attributing the current state of things to the inadequacies of the justice system.

“The prosecution of these matters leaves much to be desired,” Cole said.

In accordance with the laws of Guyana, Inspectors of the GA-FDD are permitted to prosecute cases on behalf of the department. However, even the inspectors of that department are not properly qualified to execute this task.

“That is why we are working to build capacity. We have embarked on providing training in this regard,” Cole added.

Only recently, this newspaper highlighted the fact that the GA-FDD is incapable of testing imported food products to ensure that what is inside, matches what the packaging says. That means that products believed to be canned corn beef, can very well enter the local market loaded with horse meat, and nobody would know. This can result in many adverse health effects.

Because of insufficient equipment and personnel, inspectors currently employed by the Food and Drug Department are merely tasked with examining the labels of imported products. They are unable to do much else.

Cole, in an interview, said that the importance of the GA-FDD has been overlooked for many years. Inadequate funding has had many ripple effects.

“This is a department that handles billions of dollars of imported and exported products. Yet, we have a budget that can hardly do what we need to be doing,” Cole said.

He explained that the budget constraint, which has taken the expected toll on salaries, has resulted in a high staff turnover, or in some cases, the lack of staff.

“We have lost many of our really good employees to better pay packages being offered by other Caribbean countries, and in some cases, beyond the region,” Cole noted.

He said that while the department is in possession of equipment that can do some amount of testing, the human resources to man these are lacking.

“We have made all these problems known to the government, and from the looks of it, things are expected to get better,” Cole highlighted.

Kaieteur News was informed that efforts are being made to review the budget scale of the Food and Drug Department.

“We are looking at increasing the salaries of our inspectors from $80,000 to about $130,000. This is something we have to do, if we are to improve our work,” Cole asserted.

Another challenge that the department is facing is the fact that it does not even have its own building to operate in.

The previous People’s Progressive Party Civic administration had relocated the GA-FDD to facilitate the construction of the controversial Georgetown Marriott Hotel.

The Food and Drug Department is now operating out of the Institute of Applied Science and Technology (IAST) building located within the University of Guyana’s compound.

Nonetheless, Cole said that efforts are afoot to construct a brand new building for the department.

“It would be located right here on campus,” Cole noted.

Asked why efforts to resuscitate the entire department weren’t made before, Cole responded, “well, I really can’t tell you. As you know, I have only been at the helm of this department for just about two years.”

With no proper measures to test the safety of especially canned food products, the health of the country’s people is at stake.

Just yesterday, the Government-Analyst Food and Drug Department issued an advisory on the canned fish product “Jack Mackerel,” which failed to specify the species of Mackerel contained in the imported tins.

The department said that it intercepted containers at a few City wharves “and on the shelves of our local market, labels of canned mackerel that are false, deceptive and/or misleading and are in some cases creating and erroneous impression –according to Laws of Guyana Food and Drug Act Chapter 34:03, Section six (6).” (Rehana Ahamad)

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