There are some countries in the Caribbean that have responded seriously to the warning signs that have been sent by the United States about ensuring that the foods that it consumes – whether locally produced or imported – meet certain minimum standards. The most recent and particularly clear position of the United States on this matter is set out in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) of 2010.
Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago are among the countries in the region that have been responsive to the FSMA. Jamaica, particularly has a strong vested interest in complying with their provisions of the FSMA given the importance of the US market to major Jamaican exporters like Grace.
For some time now there has been evidence of a serious public/private sector partnership in Jamaica to seek to ensure that both the agriculture and the manufacturing sectors get ‘up to speed’ with what are largely production and processing protocols and practices that take particular account of issues of safety and health.
In some respects it has been a matter of accessing technical support available through US/Jamaica cooperation initiatives. In some instances it has involved investments by the public sector to recruit various forms of outside expertise and the private sector to cause the Jamaican producers to implement the upgrading measures necessary to bring their operations in line with FSMA requirements.
All of this, of course, is being done by Jamaica to protect an existing and important export market. Presumably too, if, as appears to be the case, Jamaica can step up to meet FSMA standards it might even be able to increase market share to fill gaps that might be left by other countries that are either unable or unwilling to comply.
Quite where Guyana is in relation to the FSMA is difficult to tell. Presumably the government is aware of the Act and its implications for food exports to the US though little if anything about how it plans to ensure national compliance has been placed in the public domain. We had heard too that the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association had been paying an interest in the FSMA and how, perhaps, its members might meet those standards but the issue does not appear to be high on any part of the national agenda at this time.
It may well be true that the seemingly different attitudes of Jamaica and Guyana to the FSMA has to do with the fact that, as things stand, Jamaica has more to lose than Guyana from falling short of the FSMA requirements. That, however, is a shortsighted view of the situation that fails to take account of other factors like what is bound to be Guyana’s longer term dependence on external markets for its agricultural goods including processed goods and the exceedingly strong likelihood that the US will continue to be one of those target markets.
Even now, prevailing gold prices are making a poignant point about the dangers of overdependence on the extractive sector which is another way of saying that there is virtue in persisting and perhaps more importantly in technologically upgrading the agriculture and agro processing sectors.
Setting aside the need to meet the standards set by the US with regard to their own food consumption, compliance with the FSMA will contribute to the upgrading of our own food industries and help make what we produce become more competitive in markets beyond the US. A lot of this is in the future but then the future is no further than around the corner; which is why it makes every sense for Guyana to attach an appreciably higher level of importance to the satisfying of the provisions of the Food Safety Modernization Act.
