Importing unsafe foods: Guyana still weak and vulnerable

The report in the Wednesday November 13 issue of the Stabroek News that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) did not, after all, provide certifying clearance for the four containers of assorted food items imported from Canada by Guyanese businessman Faizal Asif Iqbal Alli which were impounded on the authority of the Government Analyst-Food & Drugs after being deemed unsafe for consumption is both relieving and disturbing. Recall that the Stabroek News, in its Tuesday November 12th editorial, had taken the precaution of leaving the door open for the possibility that the CFIA might have had nothing at all to do with providing the documentation that allowed for the containers to be landed in Guyana. The Canadians, it seems, have confirmed that indeed, the documents seen by the GAFDD were not issued by the CFIA and insofar as that particular matter is concerned, that would appear to be that.

As an aside one had always felt that the GAFDD  appeared to have been somewhat precipitate in its communication of November 5 to Ms. Susan Powell, President and CFEO of the CFIA asserting with qualification that the CFIA had,”on the dates of October 2nd, September 18th, 25th &26th respectively,” signed  “Free Sale / Health Certificate documents ………..on behalf of Mr. Faizal Ali to ship four (4) containers bearing assorted items of Food to Guyana.” The GAFDD had further called on the CFIA to exercise “greater regulatory oversight and / or scrutiny for items facilitated bearing your approval as wholeness from Canada to Guyana.” No one wishes, of course, to pour cold water on the diligence of the GAFDD in running down this matter though, it likely that the CFIA might have felt affronted by its (the GAFDD’s) unqualified assertion.

All of this, of course has no real bearing, first, on the reality, that, apparently, containers of unsafe foods were shipped to Guyana in contravention of the law and secondly, on the fact that according to the GAFDD, two of the said containers were released from the custody of the Customs Authority and into the hands of the importer without the GAFDD’s consent which the Department’s Director Mr. Marlan Cole says is, to put it mildly, a departure from procedure.

The fact that the CFIA cannot account for the issuance of the documents raises another issue and another headache for the authorities here. It would appear that we may be in the presence of some level of evidence of the sophistication of the system that drives the ‘business’ of acquiring and ‘processing’ unwholesome foods for export to receiving countries and that those methods include the falsification of certification usually issued by the CFIA, in the instance of Canada. If that is so and even leaving aside the fact that the GAFDD might have been hurried in its initial assessment of the situation, the recognition that its food safety defences can be breached must be a matter of some concern to the Canadian authorities which, from everything that we have learnt, have set out   to build their food safety defences as high as possible. 

The sad part of all this is that once again it is the consumers that are now at risk since we are told that some of the unwholesome food has already been placed in the distribution system and some of that has, in all likelihood, already been sold. Whether anything further will develop out of the ‘mystery’ of the two containers which the GAFDD says have gone missing is unclear. It is by no means unusual for these anomalies to go by quietly. As for the perpetrators of these illegal importation rackets it certainly appears that they have, seemingly with influential external support, been able to find their way around the system and in the country’s present state of lack of any real preparedness to provide effective pushback against a well-organized racket that is continually eroding the well-being of the citizenry, it is Guyana with its lack of any real defences against this dangerous, highly organized global racket that is left holding the can.  

For Guyana and particularly for the GAFDD this development gives rise to another tier of responsibility that has to do with verifying the authenticity of documents pertaining to food imports, which verification almost certainly will, not always become available quickly.