For historians of science, the Greeks were the first to mention the importance of hygiene for food safety and consumer comfort. But it was the Romans who were the first to legislate on the matter and the law provides the death penalty for anyone found guilty of pollution of water to drink. In Morocco, the 28-07 Act of food safety in force emphasizes the principles of Hygiene under the HACCP system like the other regulations of developed countries. But here as elsewhere it is easier to establish principles than to change habits that are rooted in companies for a long time. The article aims, using selected examples, to showing the recurring difficulties to see the hygiene principles be implemented by Moroccan food processing operators like their counterparts in developed countries.
Public hygiene
Thirty years ago, I had received a couple of Swiss friends for their first visit to Morocco. As a good Swiss German, the lady did honor to beer and had consumed, that same day that I intended to take them for a visit to the zoo of Temara near Rabat, several small bottles at lunch. At some point, the need to pee had become unstoppable and, for lack of other solution, the woman went near to a hedge to relieve herself. Not far away, there was a public fountain where there were kids for supplying water for their homes. So, part of the swarm of children climbed on the wall that surrounded the fountain to have a “better view”. The man then turned to me and said, “They want to check if the back of a Swiss woman is as white as her face.”It is true that for people used to the availability of public toilets in reasonable numbers in urban areas at home, the lack of such facilities here in Morocco is beyond understanding. Indeed, the capacity and strength of the bladder being what they are, it must necessarily be people who are forced to relieve themselves wherever they can and bad habits are quickly. This may possibly explain why in some factories workers are not disturbed if there are insufficient toilets for all staff, that sometimes these toilets simply have not been provided, and the women to resort to the use of diapers. But in the case of agri food, this is a crippling fault for the HACCP certifying process that some SMEs and SMIs seem not to understand.
Cleanliness at home but not at the workplace
At the beginning of my collaboration with an American Audit Office, I was invited to attend an operation of defining a sterilization schedule in an autoclave, for canned olives in a food processing unit of Fez. The company that employs around hundred people in the industrial zone of Fez belongs to a well-known local family which is in the olive processing business for generations. We soon realized, the American engineer and I, the autoclave (Barriquand Steriflow) did not work correctly. The reason was that the runoff openings (a characteristic Steriflow) inside the autoclave were largely clogged due to accumulation over a long period of amounts of fat that come from cans that are put to sterilize. In other words, these people haven’t cleaned the dirtiness inside the autoclave for a long time, see since its acquisition. It follows that the goods that this processing unit was selling as sterilized probably were not and, consequently, must have caused a foodborne illnesses and / or discomfort among an unknown number of consumers. But there was no expenditure in this case to do to ensure proper operation of the autoclave, only a cleaning from time to time with caustic soda, which costs nothing, or almost, and rinsing with tap water. A little hygiene what! But the time taken to properly clean the autoclave that day has delayed our work and pushed the end of our operations beyond midnight. Then, while I was exchanging a few words with a technician from the factory, I heard a cry of my colleague and ran back to see. « I have seen a rat » said the engineer. It was summer and she shod sandals and the rat had passed her on the foot, hence the screech! The next day, a Friday, we were invited to share a couscous with the boss of the company at home; a stately villa of luxury with large lawn and a work on the trim worthy of the great museums, marble columns etc. Everything was sparkling clean. It was the perfect hygiene. Instead, the latrines of the company were in a deplorable state with scarce running cold water, lack of toilet paper, no soap and nothing for drying hands! The workers had no place to change clothes and they ate their sandwiches each crouched where he could in a corner of the unit! The autoclave and some accessories aside, it was like in a company of the middle Ages. But the observations about this unit are almost common to many food processing companies in our country. In this respect, we must remember that large foreign purchasing centers regularly send one of their experts to check compliance fieldwork GHP (Good Hygiene Practices) and HACCP. This largely explains why we find it difficult to break into foreign markets for industrially processed foods while these products are generally not subject to any quota!
The conundrum of drinking water
There are a few years; a large company specialized in agar-agar production asked me, as local director of a US audit firm, for HACCP Certification so to start export of its products to US market. I was impressed during my factory tour the first day of work of such modern and costly equipment of the company that was working almost exclusively for export and whose processing operations were mostly automated. The number of analysis carried out on the finished product was also significant given that the agar-agar could be a substrate for microbiological determinations in a clinical laboratory. But while I was doing, a week later, my second working visit, the technician in charge of explaining the operations informed me, unlike its predecessor, that the water, used in large quantities for the work of the raw material (algae), was well water. When asked about this, the company’s president was reassuring because people, he said, come from far away to drink water from Fouwarat (Kénitra region). In this respect, the drinking water is defined by the WHO and should in particular be chlorinated (addition of chlorine disinfection element) and the Codex Alimentarius and WHO recommend the use of water of drinking quality (disinfected) for work on food. To do otherwise, meaning that water used departs from this definition is equivalent in the eyes of international regulation and of FDA with a fraudulent act. The dilemma for the company was, without going into details, that the correction of the unit’s practices had to take necessarily more time while the company wanted to take an export opportunity in the land of Uncle Sam even if we, we did not certified them for this purpose. But whose fault is it, if not of the supervisory authority who tend to consider that you can go forth to external markets simply by the will of the administrative officials of yesterday, the DPVCTRF (Protection Directorate Plant Technical Control and fraud Control) for example, or ONSSA today.
Perspective
Since the promulgation of the first hygiene standards there are more than century the goal is always the same, the fight against the proliferation of pathogens that represent more than 90% of foodborne diseases. The difference is that it is now possible to quantify the degree of support from one company to the application of principles of hygiene through microbiological analysis. My experience of several decades, operators are much more sensitive to the application of a given rule when they understand the purpose and the positive implications on the performance of their work. Regarding the food sector, officials of the ONSSA, who regularly tour all operators, must accept to reserve a portion of the time their visits to educating professionals about the links between hygiene and prevention of foodborne disease and they must prepare themselves seriously for this purpose for increasing the chances of achieving their message. To date, according to my perception of things, this work is not done or just sloppy and the result is a glaring lack of application of the principles of hygiene along the food chain including hotels and restaurants. In this respect, as a consultancy firm, we also work (on a smaller scale) with the food industry. The data from our archives (many) show that among the operators with whom we have worked, some are getting used to laxity of the supervisory authority (ONSSA now) and show interest only for the certification document as such, “HACCP certificate” for example, that we are able to grant them, for to assert and increase their revenues or meet a requirement for a foreign partner but regarding the rules, they couldn’t care less. They do not say it like that, of course, and hide behind all sorts of pretexts on which it happens that we have been duped sometimes at the beginning at least. But over time, you end up realizing that these types of operators are interested for complacency documents only. Although our position as private auditor is financially more constraining than that of officials ONSSA, we did not hesitate to break the employment relationship once it became “crystal-clear” that we were dealing with lawless opportunists in search of gain at any cost come what may. For example, an operator who asks you to send to him the HACCP certificate against payment of the bill! When necessary, we informed ONSSA whose leaders remain impervious to such communications.
In conclusion, the behavior of the boss of the olive processing unit mentioned above in the text seems to be of the same kind as that of officials ONSSA. In the first case, we can say that the property (stately villa) of boss is the fruit of his labor where the company and people working into represent the principal. A bit like a tree that bears fruit. But a boss that cares, shall we say, much more of the apple than the apple tree denotes a behavior that violates common sense and lasts only because the supervisory authority, which must ensure the implementation of the law, not doing its job. Indeed, as representatives of the regulator, these officials must push for the implementation of the law whose basic principle is the respect of hygiene that often costs nothing but roll up his sleeves and perform the work for which the operator asked to be allowed. But you really have to be blind not to see the decrepit state in which was the company mentioned above and others alike today. Beyond agents ONSSA there is the credibility of the state that says loud and clear, and we would like to believe in it, that the Kingdom of Morocco has to lead and show the way for other African countries.
