The signing into law by President Barack Obama of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in 2010 was intended to do more than send a message to Americans that the country was raising its game as far as its food safety standards were concerned. The FSMA was a robust message to the international community that countries targeting the United States as a market for their food exports would be required to meet more demanding safety standards, and those exports would have to undergo rigorous verification procedures.
The US is not the only country to have moved in the direction of tightening national food safety laws in recent years. Enhanced food safety standards, international trade and market integration are all partners in the quest to respond to critical issues resulting from the globalization of the food supply. It was this consideration that gave rise to the creation, with the support of the World Bank, of the Global Food Safety Partnership (GFSP) an institution driven by the axiom that all stakeholders have important roles to play in improving global food safety systems and enabling enhanced access to domestic and international food markets.
There exists, these days, a worldwide understanding that as countries’ demand for food ingredients and raw materials increases, there arises the corresponding need to safeguard public health while promoting food security, international trade and economic development throughout the entire value chain. In short, food safety is everybody’s business.
For countries like Guyana – and specifically for local exporters and aspiring exporters of food to the United States, where the food safety bar had traditionally been set much lower ‒ the FSMA was always likely to pose challenges. The law requires that foreign facilities “that produce, manufacture, hold, pack or distribute food” intended for the US market comply with more stringent registration requirements; increased US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) access to records, hazard analysis, more rigorous preventive controls and performance standards; implementing product tracking systems and increased record-keeping provisions; and implementing mitigation strategies for the intentional adulteration of foods.
Needless to say many developing countries found themselves hopelessly adrift of this elaborate range of requirements, and while some countries, Jamaica being a good example, made strenuous efforts to help exporters adjust to the requirements of the FSMA, others, like Guyana, dithered endlessly over the new regulations, occasionally holding a seminar here and there, which fora did not even come close to addressing the challenges for local exporters arising out of the advent of the new US legislation. It should be noted that that posture has changed very little, if at all, under the current dispensation.
Setting aside the posture of seeming official indifference to the requirements of the FSMA (which will almost certainly have significant implications, particularly for the small business export trade) national sensitivity ‒ including official sensitivity ‒ to local food safety issues is almost entirely out of sync with global realities. Indifference to food safety considerations at the local level is reflected in our lack of mindfulness of our own food safety laws and weak enforcement thereof, these deficiencies being largely accounted for by official marginalization of the Government Analyst Food & Drugs Department. (GA/FDD), the state agency charged with administering food and drug regulations.
Over the decades the authorities have ignored (and continue to ignore) the protestations of the respective directors of the department regarding long-standing institutional limitations, including a chronic lack of skills and equipment and a serious deficit in the area of enforcement clout. In large measure, the effectiveness of the GA/FDD has been hampered by the disinclination of what is now the Ministry of Public Health to allow the department to enjoy the autonomy to which it is entitled under the Food & Drugs Act. Other power brokers, including private sector functionaries, have inserted themselves into the process to profit from circumvention of the regulations in ways that put food safety at risk.
This past year, particularly, the GA/FDD has had to respond to quite a few instances of food and drug imports that have breached the law with impunity and which, in some instances, would almost certainly have compromised national food security had they been allowed to slip through. It should be added, of course, that there is already a worrying proliferation of expired and fake goods on the local market that may already be posing public health challenges. There have been instances in which such consignments (of foods, specifically) have been imported into the country and cleared Customs without the say-so of the GA/FDD. Here, it should be said that the response of the Ministry of Public Health to these situations is sometimes baffling, to say the least. Put differently, it has not always seemed that the ministry has been fully supportive of the GA/FDD in the quest for the strict enforcement of food safety regulations.
Contextually, it is apposite to draw attention to the outcomes of a Board of Inquiry into the importation of drugs into Guyana which pointed to “mismanagement and malpractices” in the procurement of pharmaceuticals at the Ministry of Public Health and, perhaps significantly, called for the removal of the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, the censuring of the deputy and the blacklisting of a Trinidadian company from involvement in future tenders for drugs being imported into Guyana. Even the procedures associated with the importation of drugs for state-run hospitals are not exempt from dangerous procedural irregularities.
Here, one may well ask whether government, at this stage, ought not to begin to confront with far more candour evidence of apparent collusion between public officials and importers (of food and drugs) in procedures that sideline the GA/FDD and in effect, marginalize the lawful import regulations. What also cannot be questioned based on evidence already in the public domain is that there appears to have been a simultaneous blooming of a season of private power brokers in the food and drugs import sector and a corresponding continual marginalization of the GA/FDD and the miniaturization of its stature and authority. The latter, surely, is reflected in the re-siting of the GA/FDD’s operations from its own (admittedly Spartan) premises at Kingston to its current even less well-appointed alternative accommodation at Turkeyen. There is, too, as mentioned earlier, the government’s protracted failure to provide the department with adequate resources, including qualified staff, to meet its needs in the context of responding to the mounting domestic and external responsibilities associated with food (and drugs) safety.
Numbered among the safety-related concerns linked to food and drug imports are widespread evidence of the proliferation of expired and fake imported foods and drugs on the market; evidence of importers’ contempt for GA/FDD requirements and the attendant landing in Guyana of foods (and drugs) including baby foods, believed to be unfit for human consumption.
If the evident implications of the US Food Safety Modernization Act are painfully apparent for the GA/FDD – particularly in terms of providing a modern standards testing facility for goods targeting the US market, it has to be said that there ought, surely, to be at least a comparable level of sensitivity on the part of the department to its domestic food safety responsibilities. It is difficult to see how it can be expected to satisfy its obligation to exporters when, for the present at least, the GA/FDD is poorly positioned even to effectively discharge its domestic food safety obligations. Perhaps the recent change in the political leadership at the Ministry of Public Health provides the appropriate opportunity for a shift towards a far more responsible official posture on food safety standards, the strict and transparent enforcement of the requisite regulations and the complete and unfettered empowerment of the GA/FDD.
