Lawmakers finalize food safety law

BEIRUT: A committee of lawmakers finalized a draft law to regulate the monitoring of food safety standards Wednesday, with the country’s health minister lauding it as a “victory.”

Meanwhile, other ministers continued to follow up with production of food at key factories.

MP Atef Majdalani announced after the committee’s meeting that the new draft law would seek to regulate monitoring of all parts of the food chain, “from the soil to [the dinner table].”

“In the meetings, we addressed the concerns and the overlapping jurisdictions without touching on the core of the law,” Majdalani said.

The MP, who is also the head of the parliamentary Public Health and Social Affairs Committee, said he would submit the final draft to Speaker Nabih Berri, who would in turn put it on the agenda of Parliament’s Joint Committees.

“Enacting the law in Parliament will not be the end of the journey, because many laws get approved but never implemented,” Majdalani told reporters.

The idea to draft the law was suggested by Health Minister Wael Abu Faour, who launched a nation-wide campaign last October against food safety violators. The widely popular campaign has shed light on food safety violations committed in hundreds of establishments across the country.

Abu Faour released a statement to comment on the finalization of the law later Wednesday, describing it as a “preliminary victory for the food safety campaign.”

“What happened is an important first step that the Lebanese state has taken toward totally guaranteeing the safety of food,” the minister said.

He said his campaign has overcome all skepticism and criticism and has begun producing tangible outcomes, proven by the new draft law.

The health minister also gave credit to late-Finance Minister Bassel Fleihan, who died in the explosion targeting the convoy of late-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005, for being the first official to shed light on the matter.

As part of the campaign, Economy and Trade Minister Alain Hakim inspected a number of diary factories in the district of Jbeil.