If the reputation of an organization is first and foremost the quality of its staff, we can say that that of ONSSA (National Health Security Office of Food Products) was marred by mediocrity at its beginning in 2009. Indeed, still recently, the body of this authority had a working approach of colonial era style. They don’t inform the companies of their planned visits, don’t disclose their quality, do communication only orally with operators and don’t leave any written record of their “working visits” or their possible observations on the inspected Unit, just to list a few common misconducts. The reality is that the essential aim of these officials was to extort money from operators, period. If, for one reason or another, a complaint is sent to these people, they are quick to deny everything outright and it gets complicated to prove anything. Finally, operators had no other alternative than to yield to that abusive system of “food quality control” with the obvious outcome that their operations were outside the norms and they became far less competitive than their foreign counterparts. The alarm call recently launched by Director General of ONSSA shows the extent of outdated or fraudulent food products, removed just in time before their introduction in the Moroccan commercial circuit, and is indicative of the deterioration scale of the food control system in Morocco. The system has ultimately lasted forever to finish at present, or at least such abuses are called to greatly diminish from now on. Indeed, the state has finally initiated a process to provide ONSSA with the credibility that it lacks. Now, having received training in the areas covered by the 28-07 law of safety of food products and sworn to apply the new regulations, the ONSSA officials will hold a professional card that they must carry so apparent in the performance of their tasks. In other words, in future, operators may be based by law to deny access of their Units to ONSSA agents that do not display their professional cards. The officials ONSSA must also put in writing in a register to this end, before leaving the audited unit, the comments and observations made during their inspection work and sign and date at the same time as the operators inspected.
Make no mistake; this is indeed a radical change in their usual behavior to which agents ONSSA are called to adapt themselves immediately. While in their past inspections, ONSSA officials have got used to ignore food safety violations (not bribes) and failed to inform of those breaches, they are now required to make their observations in a written form. By not doing so, they will be guilty of wrongdoing and will face the law.
The last food quality control campaign on the occasion of the holy month of Ramadan must have played a role in convincing the authorities to finally accelerate the implementation of the 28-07 law passed in 2010 already. The thousands of tons of goods unfit for consumption that would otherwise have been consumed without the vigilance first of all of security forces, with all the consequences that one can imagine on public health, is a meaningful element of the extent of the decay to which the national system of importation, production, control and distribution of food arrived. Everyone is responsible, to start with the various federations concerned of the CGEM (General Confederation of Enterprises of Morocco) gathering importers, producers and distributors. There are also the supermarkets and the consumers themselves and there are ONSSA, the administrative supervisor of the sector and its officials. So in addition to decrees that promulgated the new way to proceed for the audit of companies, the state has also communicated with every one of groups of interest of the food sector to remind them of their civic responsibility and encourage them to abandon policies complacency that everyone may have to date vis-à-vis the import circuit, production and trade of food products in our country. The federations must urge their members to get them to get their authorization / approval from ONSSA. The latter must respect in practice the 45-day period between the filing of a complete application and the site visit to the usual checks for the award of the authorization / approval. Importers are now educated of this requirement to be authorized and / or approved by the umbrella organization under penalty of having their imported products blocked at customs. Supermarkets are informed that from this September 1 of 2015 they should stock up on food products from producers and / or importers who are duly licensed / authorized by ONSSA. Otherwise, they will be considered accomplices of smuggling of food and would pay a very expensive price in bad publicity if they are caught by the law. Finally, ONSSA officials now know that the permissive era is over and obligation is on them to adhere strictly to the law in the performance of their control operations.
But can we therefore consider that the national agrifood sector is now freed of all handicaps that have it undermined since the colonial era? Of course not, because the devil is in the details. The system that the new regulations aim at curbing has been in place for many decades and so has had time to create its own synergy. Individual actors with interest that the system continues have had time to cozy up and will spare no effort to slow the normal evolution of the implementation of new regulations. Do not forget that ONSSA has been there for more than six years without convincing results to distinguish between his actions and ones of service Fraud that preceded him. Enforcement officers may be tempted to declare fewer visits than they would have actually worked in future. But it will take for it the complicity of operators and, in this case, they would both be outlawed people. In this respect, relevant managing hierarchy would be well advised to set in advance working schedule for officials ONSSA and put online the results of their visits to the units concerned. In the same vein, the period of 45 days for ONSSA to pay a working visit, after the filing of a complete application for authorization and / or approval, should be scrupulously respected by this organization which is not currently the case according to our knowledge. Finally, the sampling system, still entrusted, outside the norms, to people who have served their time in the “old repressive law 13-83” fraud control, who do not bear responsibility in the eyes of current regulations, continue to disrupt the orderly implementation of the new regulations. Lobbying of those small-time samplers with their former colleagues LOARC (Official Laboratory of Chemical Analyses and Research) and other official laboratories to influence the course of analysis, does not add to the clarity of the system but, on the contrary, makes it more opaque and may call into question the accession of importers for authorization and / or approval of the ONSSA. It should also correct another misconduct of ONSSA field assistants; some of these officials make copies of documents, HACCP (Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points) for example, made to a particular entity and hand them to another company that can falsify them and claim it as their own. The ONSSA hierarchy must clearly indicate that a report not properly documented or in which it is not disclosed, in particular, identifiers of the one who did it and the Unit it was made for, and is dated and signed, should be considered anonymous and worthless for an application for approval and / or authorization ONSSA.
That is the only way that credibility of ONSSA will be on track to hoist the quality of the Moroccan agrifood market and provide needed assurances to foreign equivalent organizations so to help boost the export of our food products on the African continent which needs it so much.
