Praneeta Prakash 
File Photo
Trade Minister Manoa Kamikamica has expressed optimism that the National Taskforce on Food Safety will soon deliver concrete steps to address pressing concerns within Fiji’s food industry.
Established by the Ministry in collaboration with key regulators, the Taskforce is tackling issues across the food chain, from import controls to storage practices and even retailer tampering with expiry dates.
Trade Minister Manoa Kamikamica says the government aims to implement measures that will safeguard consumers from substandard products.
Basically what happened was a lot of people are getting very inferior products coming into the country. So the logical question from every consumer is what’s happening? So I thought let’s get together and try and work out what we need to do to try and address some of these issues.
Kamikamica adds that regular updates from the Consumer Council and FCCC prompted the decision to address the issue through the establishment of the task force.
I’m hoping that maybe after sort of a couple more meetings we can kind of come up with some clear direction. Because if it requires more regulation or changes to the laws to be able to act, I know that FCC has been sort of aggressively looking at inferior product. So what we want to do is just make sure that there’s enough teeth with the regulators to make sure we can manage, particularly the type of food quality that comes in from imports
Consumer Council Chief Executive Seema Shandil says they long called for a stronger enforcement for the existing laws which makes the establishment of the taskforce and important development.
Stream the best of Fiji on VITI+. Anytime. Anywhere.
