New Year’s Eve is less than a week away. It’s the perfect time to get rid of food that’s past its sell-by date, not to mention the frenetic rise in prices.
To put it mildly, it is often a good time to launch products that have already passed their sell-by date.
And generally, under the pressure and emotion of the festive season, shoppers have no control over what they buy. Most of them don’t even have the sense to check the expiry date, after which the quality and healthiness of a product is compromised and ingestion or consumption can be a risk.
Worse still, some products carefully erase or even change the expiry date. The unhealthy ingenuity of many traders is obvious. They want to make a profit at all costs, at the expense of people’s health.
Everything from liquor and other drinks to tins, bags of rice, tins of oil, etc. are affected. Even on the shelves of supermarkets, the rule is confirmed!
So, it’s important that the authorities at all levels take steps to warn people of this phenomenon, so that the festive season can be peaceful and happy. For their part, the public must be extremely vigilant when shopping.
3 tons of pastry ingredients seized
Mohamed Rabhi, Director General of the National Agency of Food Safety, has announced the seizure of more than 3 tons of raw materials intended for the manufacture of pastries, poultry and other food products as part of a special program linked to the celebration of the administrative New Year.
According to Rabhi, the aim of the program is to check the conformity of raw materials, as well as the conditions of manufacture, preservation, transport, display, packaging, labelling and the use of coloring agents in bakery products, poultry meat and other products.
Rabhi added that since the start of the program earlier this month, around 1,500 inspection visits have been carried out across the country by the authority’s regional offices or mobile teams from the central administration.
He explained that the seizures were related to the expiration of raw materials, non-compliance with sanitary conditions for preparation and storage, and the presence of mold and foul odors.
He stressed that control campaigns would be stepped up in the run-up to the New Year due to the increase in production and storage operations.
He also urged the public to buy their products from supervised and regulated shops and to avoid informal shops and the parallel market.
Fortunately, the Health Inspectorate is there to call to order confectioners who flout the rules of hygiene and cleanliness!
