Why some juice vendors in Dar deserve a ban

Dar es Salaam. Last week’s decision by the Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) to destroy about 1,300 cartons of substandard juice in Morogoro Region came at a time of great need for bold action on irregularities in the country’s food sector.

The move by TBS to collect juice from all retail shops in Morogoro and examine its fitness for human consumption coincided with a call from the World Health Organisation on Friday, for all countries around the world to regulate their food industry.

The WHO warned on the weekend that more than 200 diseases, ranging from diarrhoea to cancers relate to what people eat---and announced a global awareness campaign on food safety, as part of today’s World Health Day commemoration, sold under the slogan: “From Farm to Plate, Make Food Safe.”

The new campaign by the UN Health Agency is a prerequisite for Tanzania in an effort to regulate its food industry which, over the years has been in the spotlight for harbouring food outlets that sell foodstuffs with ‘’unclear’’ safety standards to consumers.

Last week when TBS destroyed a consignment of fake juice at Kihonda in Morogoro, this dreadful reality came to the fore—exposing how local food outlets can, unknowingly, be potentially dangerous to people’s health.

The bureau’s public relation’s officer Ms Roida Andusamile told reporters shortly after destroying the harmful juice that the company producing it, had refused to disclose the raw materials for the drink that was already sold to many people in the municipality.Read More