BEIRUT: The bad taste left over from last month’s food scandal is just starting to fade, but in the bowels of Lebanon’s Parliament, the subcommittee tasked with addressing the revelations of moldy labneh and tainted meat is busy at work.
Led by MP Atef Majdalani, who also heads up Parliament’s Health Committee, the group convened Monday in order to continue its discussion of the newly revived food safety draft law.
“The subcommittee met in order to follow up and discuss the articles of the law,” said Majdalani after the meeting, adding that the bill should be finalized before the New Year.
“We were able to achieve [enough] progress so that we are almost done with all the articles except for those dealing with the committee and its formation,” he said, referring to the National Committee for Food Safety that would be formed as part of the draft law’s implementation.
The committee will be responsible for monitoring the various stages of the food industry in the hope of improving the quality of products provided to citizens, and will also act as an umbrella authority to bring together the relevant administrations and ministries.
But although the practicalities of the new body have yet to be worked out, the officials were able to discuss and agree on its jurisdictions.
“What’s most important is that we agreed to create a mechanism for collaboration between the committee and the concerned ministries,” Majdalani said.
One of the biggest flaws highlighted by the food scandal last month, which saw Health Minister Wael Abu Faour name and shame restaurants and food and water suppliers selling contaminated or spoiled goods, was the lack of coordination between the numerous ministries and administrations involved in the industry.
Among those hardest hit by the crackdown were factories producing dairy products such as labneh, normally some of the country’s biggest milk consumers. The closure of over half a dozen such facilities that violated food safety standards has led to a drop in the price of milk as a result of the decrease in demand.
The health, agriculture, economy and industry ministers met Monday in order to resolve the issue after local farmers in eastern Lebanon began staging protests over the falling prices.
Milk went from LL1,100 per liter to around LL700, while the farmers said that it still cost them LL900/liter to produce.
In response, a meeting between the ministers, milk producers, cow breeders and some factory owners led to a decision to fix the price of milk back at LL1,100.
“The Agriculture Ministry is the one responsible for setting the price for each liter of milk that is sold to the factories,” said Agriculture Minister Akram Chehayeb after the meeting, adding that they wanted to protect the sector, not destroy it.
However, he pointed to a number of irregularities found at the factories that have been temporarily shuttered.
Some are mixing labneh with preservatives and vegetable oils and selling the strained yoghurt product on as freshly made, he said, which is against the food safety rules.
“It’s also forbidden to use powder milk as if it’s liquid milk, and it’s forbidden to import cheese and sell it as a Lebanese product,” he added. “The ministry is monitoring and following up, there are punishments, but at the same time there are incentives.
But Abu Faour revealed that some institutions had been taking advantage of the drop in milk prices to blackmail their peers into clearing their name.
“I will name one: Taanayel Les Fermes, which hasn’t been examined yet so we don’t have results for it,” he said, referring to health safety inspections that have been conducted in dairy factories throughout the Bekaa Valley.
Abu Faour explained that Taanayel had attempted to bribe struggling dairy farmers by saying it would buy milk from them if they pressured the Health Ministry into publicly announcing that Taanayel met national safety standards.
“This blackmailing of the government will prompt me to take legal action,” the minister warned.
Continuing his backing of Abu Faour’s controversial campaign, Prime Minister Tammam Salam Monday reiterated that all efforts should be exerted to protect citizens.
“I know that the most notable dimension of agricultural matters is that which concerns food,” Salam said. “We are today in the midst of the ‘Abu Faourian’ revolution for food safety.”
Salam also praised Chehayeb for the work he has done, and expressed his hope that the new, more vigorous food safety standards become a long-term thing.
But not everyone is on board with Abu Faour’s public blacklisting of eateries and businesses, with some ministers pointing to the potentially negative effect on the economy.
“When fabricated and illogical information is released, this incurs great damage on the owners of businesses, to the extent that they are destroyed economically,” Industry Minister Hussein Hajj Hasan warned.
He pointed out that the food production industry employed approximately 50,000 workers and constituted 4 percent of Lebanon’s gross domestic product, and said he believed credit should be given to institutions that have worked to resolve the ministry’s complaints.
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