By Katare Mbashiru and Fariji Msonsa The Citizen Reporters
(email the author)
Posted Friday, July 12 2013 at 08:19
Posted Friday, July 12 2013 at 08:19
In Summary
A survey
by The Citizen yesterday indicated that it was business as usual as
defiant traders continued to sell the oil to consumers who remain
unaware of the crisis
Dar es Salaam. Banned brands of
imported cooking oil are still on sale four days after the Tanzania
Bureau of Standards (TBS) declared them unfit for human consumption. The
watchdog says pulling them off the shelves is a daunting task and it
has yet to crack the whip on shops selling OK, VIKING and ASMA. That
will have to wait until it completes initial investigations into how
much of the oil is on the market, according to TBS Public Relations
Officer Roida Andusamile.
A survey by The Citizen yesterday
indicated that it was business as usual as defiant traders continued to
sell the oil to consumers who remain unaware of the crisis. “We are
still in talks with local authorities and the police to form a joint
task force to remove the oil from the market,” Ms Andusamile said.
Matters are further complicated by the fact that
the importer of the oil is unknown. “It was smuggled into the country
through unofficial ports scattered along the coast,” she explained.
TBS has moved to allay fears about locally manufactured versions of the same brands, which Ms Andusamile gave a clean bill of health.
“Consumers should beware and ensure they buy only
locally made OK, VIKING and ASMA,” she said. “These are clearly marked
and have the TBS quality mark.”
TBS head of Certification Lazaro Msasalaga added
that weeding out the fake oil would take time because it was spread
countrywide. “Stop buying these brands so that the sellers stop
purchasing more stocks
from the market,” he said. “It is not easy to withdraw all substandard
cooking oil from suppliers...it may take quite some time to clear
them.”
According to Mr Msasalaga, who is also the
agency’s inspector, a follow-up of local producers of the same cooking
oil was ongoing to see if they were using materials from Malaysia.
The Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority (TFDA) has also thrown its weight behind investigations on the banned oil.
The TFDA director of food safety, Mr Raymond
Wigenge, told The Citizen yesterday that his agency was responsible for
registration of foodstuff and it had started collecting samples of the
oil on sale. This comes at a time when the country faces a rising supply
of smuggled sub-standard products.
TFDA’s directorate of food safety is responsible
for food inspection, pre-market evaluation and registration of food
products. The directorate is also responsible for food establishments,
food risk analysis, food import and promotion control and export certification.
Mr Wigenge added: “We are now gathering samples of
the cooking oil. Should they be unfit for human consumption, we will be
able to tell what health problems
they can cause. It all depends on the parameters after we have examined
any particular foodstuff. Sometimes the problem might be in just one
batch. We can tell this only after our assessment of the cooking oil.”
In a public notice on Tuesday, TBS ordered sellers
to withdraw their products from the market with immediate effect on the
grounds that they were unsuitable for human consumption. The agency
warned that tough action would be taken against those selling such oil.
TBS said the samples of the cooking oil that was imported illegally from Malaysia do not conform to the standard as the marking and labelling did not indicate the batch number.
Moreover, the samples did not meet the standards
in terms of moisture content, impurities, iodine value, free fatty
acids, iron, copper and other components that are critical parameters.
Source: the citizen.
Source: the citizen.
