BEIRUT: Health Minister Wael Abu Faour Tuesday ordered the closure of food and medicine warehouses at Beirut’s airport, citing poor hygiene and expired items found during a government inspection.
“The minute you walk into the warehouses, you feel like you entered a dump,” Abu Faour said, after inspecting the airport along with Transportation Minister Ghazi Zeaiter.
“This is an execution room for the Lebanese citizen’s health.”
“What country is this in which meat and fish are mixed with medicine and trash?” he went on to say, adding that the warehouses’ floors were dirty, and some food products, such as butter, were stored inside garbage rooms.
Zeaiter’s reaction to the scene, was: “Disgusting!”
“The conditions inside the refrigerated warehouses are scary, horrible, and unacceptable. They threaten the health of humans,” the minister said.
He pledged to introduce changes to the facilities and to take action against the warehouse administration staff.
“I am making a decision to confiscate all medications at the airport, and I will not allow their entry into Lebanon,” Abu Faour announced, saying he could not risk allowing in medicine that had been stocked alongside fish.
He referred the case to the judiciary for further investigation.
In addition to the dirty floors and unsafe storage, the health minister said some of the food products had expired nearly 20 years ago.
“Dates on some food showed they had expired in 1995,” he said, adding that many of the drugs had not been stored at the required temperatures.
“Some medications requiring [storage at] 0-4 degrees Celsius were kept at 11 degrees Celsius,” he added.
Tuesday’s move was the latest in a series of actions taken by the health minister as part of his high-profile food safety campaign launched last month.
“As we go deeper into the case of food safety, we are becoming more and more certain that we live on a mountain of corruption,” Abou Faour said.
As the ministers left, Zeaiter reached for the “Keep Area Clean” sign posted outside the warehouses and tore it down.
Other ministries have taken similar measures in the wake of the food scandal.
Separately Tuesday, Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb announced that he had ordered the closure of several unlicensed agricultural companies across the country.
At a news conference, he said investigations had revealed that substandard chemical products were being imported from Syria, posing a threat to local industry.
“Lebanon is not a dumping ground for anyone,” the minister said, warning traders not to bring shoddy products into the country.
He did not name the companies he ordered shut down, but said inspections of food factories will continue.
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