No quality control measures for food, alcoholic imports

Comment & Analysis
BY JENNIFER DUBE GOVERNMENT does not have a reliable monitoring mechanism to ensure that imported food and alcoholic beverages items are safe for human consumption, exposing consumers to harmful substances, officials admitted last week.

 

The shocking admission followed government’s ban on the importation of chickens supplied by a South African company that has admitted selling recycled chicken to major supermarkets.

Supreme Poultry was accused of treating chicken that had overstayed in supermarket fridges with chlorine and injecting them with brine — water saturated or nearly saturated with salt for use as a preservative — before being repackaged and sold with a new expiry date.

Some of the chickens found their way to Zimbabwe to compensate for the serious shortage of poultry products in the country.

Zimbabwe also imported poultry products from as far as South America.

The collapse of the local manufacturing and agricultural industries has forced the country to import most of its food products.

Greedy retailers, aided by corrupt officials have taken advantage of the country’s porous borders to smuggle food including genetically modified (GMOs) products, which are illegal.

Investigations by The Standard revealed that most of the potatoes and tomatoes sold at vegetable markets around Harare were smuggled from South Africa, which allows its farmers to grow GMOs.

Counterfeit alcoholic spirits are also sold by some established retailers with a major brewer claiming that the country was “swamped with imported and non-compliant spirits, beers and coolers in the form of sachets and various bottles similar to non-alcoholic drinks.”

Eve Gadzikwa, the Standards Association of Zimbabwe director general said although her organisation was not a regulator, they were alarmed by the influx of the uncontrolled imports.