— Food and Drug Department says breach of law will not be tolerated

Importers and distributors of food, drug, cosmetics and medical devices, who continue to act in violation of the Food and Drug Act, could find themselves on the wrong side of the law, Director of the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department Marlan Cole has warned.

In an exclusive interview with Guyana Chronicle, Cole said the sale of substandard food, drug, cosmetics and medical devices continues to be a major problem on the local market, but with an expected boost in tools and human capacity, the Food and Drug Department will be redoubling its efforts in 2018.

“The landscape is changing, the risk is greater, and the department’s position is now stronger, and so some of the practices they would have gotten away with in the past, that might not be possible going into the future,” Cole warned, as he pointed to the issues such as faulty labeling and poor storage facilities.

“One of the risks, is that, if you have unsuitable storage facility, you could have proliferation of rodents where they can contaminate your product, which can lead to events such as leptospirosis,” the Food and Drug Department Director added, while stating clearly that such cases will not be tolerated.

For years, the Government Analyst Food and Drug Department has been understaffed – a situation which has crippled its ability to carry out its function on a much larger and wider scale, though it would have recorded many successful cases. But with the intervention of the Public Health Ministry, in particular the Minister of Public Health Volda Lawrence, these issues are soon to be rectified. The department is expected to be complemented with additional technical staff.

BETTER PACKAGE
“We are getting more persons and the remuneration package is being adjusted because for quite some time, because of the remuneration package, the positions were not attractive enough for skilled persons. Like a pharmacist wouldn’t come and work at the Food and Drug Department and, you could only be a drug inspector if you are a pharmacists and we would have suffered over the years due to the lack of personnel to carry out enforcement activities as it relates to drugs,” Cole explained.

The excuse of not having sufficient staff will not be applicable going forward, and as such enforcement activities on the part of the department will be heightened.
It was on that note, he warned that Customs Entry Documents, for products, must be accompanied with the original Health or Free Sale Certificate issued by the Regulatory Authority of the Country of Origin as is prescribed in the Food and Drug Act 32 (2) or they (products) will not be permitted entry.

According to the Food and Drug Act 32 (2), “no article of food… shall be imported into Guyana unless the article wholly conforms to the law of the country in which it was manufactured or produced, and is accompanied by a certificate in prescribed form and manner that the article does not contravene any known requirement of the law of that country…”

Cole noted that in 2017, the department was inundated with requests for waivers by importers which are a clear violation of the Act. He made it clear that in 2018 requests for waivers will not be facilitated by the department, emphasising that only custom entries that are accompanied with the relevant documents will be released for sale on the local market.

“If you are exporting a product from let’s say Vietnam, Singapore or Thailand, we don’t have officers located in those jurisdictions to supervise or inspect the facility or the product before it comes to Guyana, so globally, what most regulatory agencies do, like ours, we depend on documentation from our sister regulatory agencies, Food and Drug in Vietnam, Food and Drug in Singapore, or Food and Drug in Thailand, so we would depend on their assenting document to say, look the facility where this product is manufactured or made is under our supervision and record is being kept,” he explained, while emphasising that the authority must state that the food is safe for human consumption.

ISSUES CERTIFICATE
In Guyana, he said the Food and Drug Department issues original Health or Free Sale Certificates to exporters of rice, rum and pharmaceuticals, coconut water and other products made in Guyana.

Additionally, he reminded that the exact name and complete address of the manufacturer and the country of origin must be stated in English on all labels, in accordance with the Food and Drug Act, Chapter 34:03, Part II of Section 6.
It was noted that the department has been consistently encountering imported items where the name and address of the manufacturer is not stated and in some cases the country of origin is unknown.

“Look, examine, inspect, ensure that you purchase products that are in English language so you can read and understand the storage instructions, and you can know for sure the country of origin, to ensure that labels are complete,” Cole urged consumers.
Despite the shortage of staff, the Food and Drug Director said his department recorded a successful year, winning at least four High Court cases brought against importers and distributors who had breached the act.

“With respect to food, misleading labels, erroneous labels, we were successful in court matters, with erroneous labels, and with false and misleading labels, we would have been successful in getting those products off the market. With respect to products bearing a brand name that is not consistent with the location where the product is harvested, we were successful as well in removing those off of the market,” he noted.

Additionally, he said the department was the first in the Caribbean to comply with a regional system. “In terms of advancing, we were successful in utilising recommendations from the Caribbean Registration System; they would have assessed the safety and efficacy of a drug to be used in the entire region, and they would have recommended that drug to member states, and we have registered that drug, and we were the first country in the Caribbean to do so,” he explained.

But, he said, these successes could not have been recorded without the support of the Public Health Ministry and the National Food Safety and Control Committee.

“The National Food Safety and Control Committee has members from all the regions in Guyana, and we meet monthly and whenever we meet we try to highlight some of the substandard foods that are currently on the market, and some of the initiatives that we have to take to ensure that there is no proliferation of substandard food drug or cosmetics on our market,” he noted.