Acting Director at the Inspectorate Directorate division of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), Maria Lovelace Johnson, has advised the general public to desist from buying dented products in the market ahead of the Christmas celebrations in the country.

According to her, when there is an impact at the point close to the edge of such cans, a tiny hole is created which allows air to penetrate. Mrs Johnson explained that once that happens, “micro-organisms are ubiquitous”, as such, wherever there is air on these dented products it causes the cans sometimes to bloat, which poses risk to one’s health.

“We are telling consumers; it is not the best to buy dented products. People too know that FDA is educating the population, telling them dented products are not the best. So, what they are doing is buy one, get one free, to entice people to buy dented products”.
Maria Lovelace Johnson

To a large extent, Mrs Johnson cautioned the public against expressing any form of interests in “freebies”. She intimated that should they be tempted to buy such products, they must conduct an “assessment” of the goods themselves.

Standards of products during Christmas

Commenting on the standard of products particularly with respect to the influx of goods during this time of the year, Mrs Jonson revealed that when that occurs, product near expiration dates infiltrate the market as importers bring in goods with limited lifespan and flood them in the markets. She indicated that this gets the Authority’s market surveillance department combing these markets to fish out expired those goods.

“To some extent yes… It’s not about standards going down, it’s about the markets having a lot of products present at Christmas time. But then the FDA has put in a regulation that doesn’t let that happen anymore. We put that in last year. Hitherto, we had the market being flooded with all sorts of products around Christmas time. But we put in this regulation that does not allow products that do not have two-thirds of their self-life intact, being allowed into the country… We do not have those ones coming in with standards falling and all of that.
Maria Lovelace Johnson

Mrs Jonhson revealed that “traceability” of expired products among hawkers became difficult. As such, the Authority decided that “two-thirds” of shelf-life must be intact before goods are imported into the country.

“Then again, our ports of entry too, we are not allowing unregistered products into the country. Initially, they were bringing them to their warehouses… because we did not have FDA warehouses, so to speak, they were keeping them in their own warehouses… Someway, somehow, they had ways of taking some out. So now, if it is not registered, we are not allowing it into the country. These are things that we have put in place, that have to a large extent, reduced the fact that around this time we have standards falling…”
Maria Lovelace Johnson

Touching on the difference between best before and expiry dates, Mrs Johnson expressed that the best before date tells the purchaser that if he or she take the product before such a date the “integrity” or “characteristics” of the product may not be as it was in the beginning.