When profits trump the health of a nation…

Director of the GAFDD, Minister of Public Marlan Cole

Even as Guyana persists in what, over the years, has been a far from successful effort to stave off the proliferation of fake food imports resulting from illegal relabelling and transactions involving the lucrative importation of ‘cut price’ fake foods, mostly from parts of Asia, reports from Africa, particularly, suggest that others, as well, are paying a high price for their failure to fend off illegal fake food imports.

A report from Quartz Africa, an international news site launched in Africa in June 2015 and which aims to cover a global view of the continent and monitored by the Stabroek Business – sites examples of “food fraud” in Africa, driven by corrupt transactions widely believed to be informed by collusion between importers and state officials. There have been instances (in Nigeria) the report says that have resulted in deaths from tainted foods and have left entire populations vulnerable to health threats linked to consumption of tainted food imports.

Not only is the tragic incidence of health issues arising from fake food and foods otherwise unfit for human consumption prevalent in Africa but according to the Quartz Report published in March this year the practice is part of “a global explosion of food fraud, when companies purposely mislead the public about products.” The Quartz article cites a report emanating from the United States’ Grocery Manufact-urers Association,  asserting that “food fraud affects approximately 10 percent of all commercially sold food products and costs the global food industry between $10 billion and $15 billion annually.”