Reports said the chickens were thawed for 24 hours at room temperature before being treated with chlorine to reduce bacterial load and then scientifically tested to determine levels of micro-organisms. They were then injected with brine before being repackaged and sold with a new expiry date.
If this revelation had not come from the supplying country — South Africa —Zimbabweans would never have known what they have been consuming.
In a country where food shortages have been an issue in the recent past, it is easy for food importers to exploit the country’s food security vulnerability.
And because Zimbabwe has experienced food shortages manifested in the empty supermarket shelves of yesteryear, it is easy for government to throw caution to the wind and allow wholesale imports of substandard food to give to the world the impression that all is well.
But the ban on the recycled chicken should not be used as a red herring. Instead, authorities should investigate to what extent unscrupulous exporters and importers of consumables have been able to bring into the country food that is not fit for human consumption.
Investigations indicate that chicken is not the only substandard food Zimbabweans have been forced to consume in the recent past. Medicines and beverages — alcoholic and non-alcoholic — have been known to fall short of rigorous standards. There has also been the importation on a large scale of GMO foods.
There is a serious business side to the issue of food imports. In our skewed business environment it has become cheaper to land imported foodstuffs than to buy locally produced ones. What has this done to our local industry and its ancillary businesses?
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Two issues are therefore at stake: Our people’s health and the survival of various sectors of industry.
Government should urgently address this worrying development before we read of cases of sickness or worse because the required vigilance has broken down.
