Five years after the enactment of the “28-07” food safety Act, hereinafter “the law”, ONSSA seems unable to implement the regulation in question, notwithstanding his verbal lucubration. The authority has however written a circular note of September 22, 2014 titled: “Approval, or health permit, for storage warehouses for imported foods” to inform importers that beginning first December 2014, access to Moroccan market would be denied for their imported foods if they did not have for that deadline an approval, or health permit, for storage warehouses for imported foods. But the press has echoed in the last days of a new circular of ONSSA of last December to the regional directors of the national authority that cancels the note of September until further notice, cancelling at the same time the scheduled blockage that hovered over imported foods and prolonging de facto the status quo, i.e. referring to an undefined date of entry into force of the law. This article reflects on these repeated false notes that ONSSA has not finished producing since its inception that reduce each day a little more what little credibility he has left with equivalent bodies in other countries and especially with Moroccan consumers in the interest of which ONSSA is supposedly acting.
Overview on food imports
At the same time that French occupant deployed all his talents to quashing the development of a Moroccan agribusiness activity (see under: http://alkhabir.org/the-exploitation-of-the-production-control/), that country has continued maneuvering for keeping our national food import trade under French control. The relatively disproportionate development of the import business / distribution of food products to Morocco from France are the result of this strategy. It is an activity where there is little risk, especially if you have the right information of the powerful French Chamber of Commerce in Casablanca on products that you might import with profit. This also explains the ease with which the French operators or fans of the French commercial case, settle and grow rapidly on the imported food sector. They are also strongly assisted by powerful service providers, like SGS, VERITAS and others present in our country since the protectorate and very skilled on Moroccan administration behavior inherited from colonial France. Some of these providers have warehouses leased to importers. To put it simply, products, and operators from metropolitan France carve the lion’s share of the Moroccan market import / distribution of food products, and elsewhere in all of francophone Africa. It is therefore easy to understand that distribution of the ONSSA note of September 22, threatening the closure of the Moroccan market before the importers that not conform with the law had touched a nerve; which then probably caused a violent reaction with arguments that led officials ONSSA without further notice to suspend the implementation of the measures announced in the first circular. As the web site of ONSSA is silent on the conditions that forced the authority to back down on the entry into the law enforcement phase, it remains only the way of speculation and conjecture to try to understand what has occurred to prevent once again the new regulation to come into force.
The import, commercial business
Common to import with the work of a production company is that in one case as in the other there is a need for a storage area. In HACCP, such a room must be clean and easy to clean and disinfect in all its nooks and crannies. Then, depending on the products to be stored there, it should be possible to define a given temperature and maintain or have suitable equipment in place (refrigerators, freezers, etc.) and have the same care for the moisture content. The room must be free from contamination and / or cross-contamination. But in rental situations, sometimes several importers share the same storage space. Furthermore, among these operators, there are some who need a workshop to distribute the products received in large quantities such as powders, for example into smaller containers and label them. It is rare that an importer requires a more elaborate system to do its job. For this reason, the operations in this agribusiness segment are closer to commercial activity as that of production. If, in addition, the importer simply rents space from an owner, his business is closer still to an annuity business! But these are profit-making activities as Moroccan clientele of products imported from France is that of the upper middle class and beyond that has a good purchasing power. So that ONSSA has put a stop to its willingness to implement the first phase of the law just days after the entry into force indicated in its first circular note without explanation suggests that the obstacle to the application should be of size. Press spoke about difficulties that importers have found trying to comply with the law. In fact, is there a difference in what is required by law to importers compared to other operators in the agrifood sector for obtaining HACCP approval (agreement)? Then the idea of ONSSA in testing the application of the law on importers in the first place was it really a good move?
Folder approval or authorization
Decree of the Act lists type of companies and establishments that require an HACCP approval on one side and those needing a license GHP (Good Hygiene Practices) on the other. However, this regulatory document does not differentiate importers from other operators in the food chain in relation to a priority of implementation of the law. Similarly, the Ministerial Decree indicates type of documents to forward to ONSSA to get HACCP approval or for obtaining a license but refers to operators and doesn’t discuss separately the case of storage facilities importers. In short, the regulation, like other laws of developed countries, thinks in terms of potential hazards that a food may pose on the health of consumers to determine if the company that manufactures it needs an HACCP approval (meat producers, dairy products, eggs, fish etc.), or if the operator needs a simple authorization (dry pasta producers, flour, confectionery etc.) and must only comply for GHP (Good Hygiene Practices). According to the information available to us, importers wishing to be “HACCP approved” (agreed by ONSSA) must provide the same type of folder like a company that manufactures locally the equivalent of the imported product. If this is understandable, we understand less why the deadline of 1 December to come into compliance was required from importers but not of other segments of the national food industry. Then, looking at it more closely, the information required in the application for a “HACCP approval” of an importer, such as: “detailed diagrams production and the daily production capacity and / or annual etc. » (http://www.onssa.gov.ma/fr/images/reglementation/transversale/ARR.244-13.FR.pdf) and other elements may have no sense for this category of professionals. The Director General of ONSSA must surely have drafted his circular of September 22 after considering the potential implications of his approach on importers as a whole, but considering the current stalemate of the law, or its reflection was hasty, or his reasoning was irrelevant.
How does the FDA in such cases
With regard to food safety, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), the most experienced authority in the treatment of this type of problem, determines requirements to be met by operators according to the potential dangers, and their occurrences, that the foods they produce may pose on the consumers. The botulism bacterium, which is fatal, is the one that pose the severest foodborne disease on the consumer and it is frequently found in canned products. Under these conditions, the US regulation is extremely demanding on the production of canned food for both US producers than abroad. For the latter, the FDA cannot inspect with the same ease as in the case of local producers, the federal authority empowers the importer which supplies the goods. This one has the obligation to take all appropriate measures to ensure that his foreign producer partner applies rules equivalent to those of the FDA for the production of food, including canned. The importer must have on hand the documents that attest to the quality of work from his supplier for food products received to be submitted on request to FDA inspectors. It must also meet all other points of law that may apply to their work. In this sense, the US importer is considered by FDA as a full professional and when a new regulation to follow is scheduled to enter into force, the deadline for operators to comply with the law has less to do with the proper status of an operator (producer, importer, distributor, etc.) than with the objective difficulties to put the new rule implemented in the field.
How the ONSSA should be doing
The ONSSA regularly sends to the print and audio-visual sum of statistical numbers (that often are unverifiable) that are supposed to inform on its interventions on the food chain. It should therefore be possible to extract from this data jumble lists of operators (producers, importers, distributors, etc.), arranged by food category (sensitive, less sensitive etc.) they place on the market. The sensitivity of a product is based on the potential danger that such food may pose on health of consumers. The priority of course would be the implementation of the law for the products with the greatest risk to the consumer whether imported or locally produced. It is this approach that equivalent bodies of ONSSA in other developed countries follow in fulfilling the law. By notifying its will to implement the regulations this way, no operator would have anything to complain including the ones privileged among them who are on the luxury niche of importing French food products because they would have been treated in the same manner as other industry stakeholders. The deadline given to operators to apply the law should at the same time enable them to inform ONSSA in written form for suggestions of a different deadline if they have a complaint or argument to justify any delay in the implementation of the law. But once settled the procedural details, the deadline for the application of the regulations must be observed. Indeed, the authority responsible with enforcing the law will have difficulties to fulfill its mission if she herself does not inspire respect. The repeated procrastination of ONSSA since its creation does not help the authority in achieving its duties for the time being.
