By Mothusi Thabane
The Maseru City Council (MCC) has issued a stern warning to wholesalers and supermarkets on Monday this week to comply with expiry dates on food labels and to construct proper storage for the items.
Stored in incorrect, poorly-ventilated conditions, bacteria and mould begin to flourish. This in turn can contaminate food production equipment and, ultimately, your products. That can lead to food that’s off before its use by date, consumer complaints and potentially product recalls.
In addition, food poisoning is frequently caused by bacteria from foods that have been incorrectly stored, prepared, handled or cooked. Food contaminated with food poisoning bacteria may look, smell and taste normal. If food is not stored properly, the bacteria in it can multiply to dangerous levels.
According to the MCC assistant public relations officer Khotso Makamo, wholesalers and supermarkets continue to store beverages and food items outside the stores in open spaces.
“Our concern is that food is stored outside, in direct sunlight, diminishing its nutritional value even if it has not reached its expiry date,” Makamo said.
Makamo emphasised that there are certain requirements for storing beverages and other food items, but shop owners continue to ignore them.
“We realised lately that supermarkets and wholesalers buy goods in bulk in order to get large discounts. They buy a lot of stock which does not fit in their store rooms, so they keep it outside where it is exposed to rain and sunlight.”
“This week MCC principal health inspector wrote notices that within seven days wholesalers and supermarkets should remove food items stored in open spaces and remove expired food stuffs from shelves,” he said.
“The reasons MCC gets from supermarkets and wholesalers is that the stock is stored outside temporarily for offloading purposes, but we have realised that these storage spaces have become permanent storage spaces. As a result, we have written notices to the wholesalers and supermarkets to comply with the regulations within seven days.”
A manager at one of the wholesalers on the outskirts of Maseru said the last inspection by the MCC was in December last year. Pointing at the stacks of beverages going up more than five metres high, the manager said: “There is nothing wrong with these drinks.”
It was just then that an unidentified health inspector from MCC moved into the premises for a new inspection, noting afterwards that things were in order “except for some items on the shelves which will expire soon and some boxes leaning out on the shelves. Those might fall and injure people.”
“The drinks you see outside will be moved in as soon as we get space inside,” the manager Mohammed Moniruzzaman continued immediately after the inspection.
Some of the labels on drinks had lost their original colour, turning yellowish from their original red colour.
“The sun changes the colour on the labels, but the bottle is not affected. The drink is fine,” he said.
Teboho Mapetja, a businessman who runs several businesses including a grocery shop at Mathokoane, said small shops sometimes lose money and customers because of expired goods.
“Sometimes we forget to check expiry dates on the items and end up buying expired goods. But I think that most of the time it is because the food stuff was not stored properly. There is nothing worse than a customer coming back to you with a rotten sausage or beans with cowpea and bean weevils crawling in the plastic pack. You have to refund the customer. You lose the customer and the money,” he regretted, adding that life is harder now than it was in 2019,
“Prices rise daily. When you go for stock you have to take more money than last time, just in case prices have gone up,” he said.
“This is a wake-up call for small businesses. We have to renew our minds and reinvent new ways of making profit. Where we used to sell a whole cabbage, we now have to cut it in half so that we can sell it before it rots. If you get expired or rotten foods, they don’t refund you at the wholesalers and that’s a loss.,” he lamented.
