adminIn an interview yesterday, Masvingo City Council chief health director Mr Zvapano Munganasa said the habit by shops to sell expired groceries was worrying.
He said his department would not hesitate to deal with the errant businesses as they were putting the health of residents at risk.
“Every month we carry out routine checks within the city’s shops and if we find that there are foodstuffs whose shelf life has expired we simply order their destruction. We have found a good number of shops including bigger wholesale shops with expired groceries within their shelves and this is worrying. It is the residents’ health at stake here and business people should be responsible enough and avoid such unethical business conduct,” said Mr Munganasa.
“The biggest consignment of foodstuffs that we condemned recently amounted to three tonnes and we found it in one of the big wholesale shops in our city.”
He said the local authority’s health inspectors were empowered by the Health Act to deal with shops that sell expired products.
“We are empowered by Section 10 and 69 of the Health Act to destroy and in some cases sue the businesses for selling expired products and we have some shops that we have taken to court and they have been convicted,” said Mr Munganasa.
He said when the food expire, quality would be compromised and the nutritional value of that particular product reduced.
“When foodstuffs expire a lot of changes take place. They can lose their original taste and the smell might not be pleasant anymore. It means quality of the product won’t be the same. It is, however, advisable for shop owners to take their products they think have expired to an accredited laboratory or Government health analysts so that they undergo microbiological test. The onus is with the business persons,” said Mr Munganasa.
He said all expired products would be destroyed in the presence of the health inspectors from the local authority, but if it is a large consignment, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) would be called to attend.
The health director said if businesses that has been cautioned against selling expired foodstuffs continue violating the Health Act, the local authority could use the Local Authority Shop Licence Act to revoke their operating licences.
“Our main thrust is to educate the business persons and protect consumers but when that route fails because some unscrupulous businesses may resist our directives, we may be forced to take extreme measures like cancelling the operating licence,” he said.
Expired foodstuffs may cause ionisation in place of oxidation to some of the body tissues as they produce radical ions.
They can destroy all cells in the body depending on the degree of ionisation.
Online Reporter