Lately, many sources confirm the delegation by state bodies concerned, initially by simple decision of a service of the Ministry of Agriculture, of operations of the sampling of goods, to private entities which in turn give the samples to state laboratories for the analytical controls. This article aims to decipher what such a new initiative may be hiding as well as possible implications for regulatory and legal validity of Bulletins Analysis (BA) that result.
Reminder about lab work logic
A laboratory of food testing usually performs two types of analysis, the operations of physical chemistry and others in the field of microbiology. The analyses are conducted according to predetermined regulatory protocols. The results are usually handed to the Chief (physical chemistry or microbiology) who endorses them before handing them to the hierarchy to implement the BA itself to be signed by a responsible and qualified graduate. The sample (or more) analyzed was of course previously taken by a sampling technician in a place sometimes very far from the laboratory where it is tested. In this respect, while the analytical control takes place in a laboratory, a place provided and equipped for the job, sampling can occur in all sorts of places.Therefore, this must be carefully prepared so as not to affect the results of analysis and interpretation that follows in the BA. So, the mission of sampling is a very sensitive step in the global control and testing of samples and must be performed by someone relatively young and healthy, well qualified for this type of work. Usually, the sampler is an experienced technician who best knows the peculiarities of materials and / or products to be sampled to avoid distorting when running the sample or during storage and / or transport of the sample pending analysis.
Analytical control operations under the repealed Act “13-83”
The law 13-83, now repealed and replaced by the 28-07 Act, entrusted the authority of fighting against fraud to do the sampling of goods. Officials of these services were completely independent of the official laboratories, also from LOARC (Laboratoire Officiel d’Analyses et de Recherches Chimiques). Documents in our archives show that many of these officials were unaware of the specific work of the sampling of goods which certainly had, before 2000, unfavorable impact on the results of analysis of samples examined at the time. As expert witness, I had the opportunities, during second assessment operations required by Courts, to raise this issue with leaders of LOARC and other state laboratories.Their answer was always the same: “We are not responsible for samples that are given to us“. This meant two things: 1) that the results given by the LOARC could not be questioned and 2) if there were any doubt, it had to be settled with sampling officials who may have cheated and handed the official laboratory “bad sample” (Value of today, if there is a dispute, the owner of a commodity must settle the case with the responsible of sampling). Companies had tried to file a complaint in court against services Fraud without success.Indeed, on the BA of state laboratories, origin of their worry, little or nothing was said about the work of officials of the sampling operations.In short, by ruling out responsibility of operations of sampling from the work of analytical control, everything was done to keep hands free, of official’s laboratory on one side and officials Fraud on the other, on the total control of the flow of goods into and outside the Kingdom. At the same time, with that approach to work, it becomes virtually impossible to achieve any claim on the part of a disadvantaged operator.
Control according to the 28-07 Act
The 28-07 food safety Act and texts for its application currently designs, like the regulations of developed countries, the examination and analysis operations as “indivisible” including both sampling as laboratory analysis. Thus, with his signature at the bottom of BA, the head of the official laboratory of the state (or other), accepts responsibility for the entire procedure starting with sampling operations, through the laboratory analysis and ending with edition signed BA on the sample as ” representative ” of the batch of goods. It should be understood that in the event of a dispute, the responsibility of the laboratory is full of all the operations described above.
What about law enforcement 28-07
Information intersected from several sources show that sampling operations these days, on goods for import and / or export from Casablanca that are analyzed afterwards by one or other of state laboratories, are outsourced to private companies, following a “sovereign” decision by a department of the Ministry of Agriculture. Now, some leaders of these companies did their career under the banner of the defunct repressive law “13-83” before retiring. This blog has no information on how such a privilege and such a charge have been transferred from public to private, and under what circumstances. Pending more evidence on what appears to be a transaction, it is possible to draw two meanings: 1) According to our point of view, state officials behind this initiative make things difficult for Morocco in being transparent with operations of expertises and analysis and offering equal treatment to concerns of foreign companies interested in investing in Morocco. Then 2) in entrusting the sampling operations to independent companies from the laboratory responsible of the subsequent analysis , the responsible who took this decision discredit national regulation, as they consider sampling operations, that may impact laboratory results, not of their own responsibility but rather of another independent company ! It is true that in the event of a dispute over the results of a BA, with this system of arbitrary separation of the operation of sampling from remaining steps of analysis and control,a disadvantaged industrial would not be able to get any result whatsoever of any complaint. Because it will take a long time (businessmen usually don’t have so much), money and patience to eventually pinpoint a manager of any negligence. This is probably the intent of those behind this illegitimate manipulation of the law. This was the situation under the old law “13-83” that made most foreign companies interested to invest in Morocco flee at the time.
There is not, in conclusion, to be alarmed more than that. Nevertheless, there eighteen years ago, the LOARC, by his fault, helped put a person to prison for a year of his life because the laboratory failed to distinguish between a beer with alcohol and another without. The same laboratory, just recently, was unable to differentiate, despite his “prestigious accreditation”, a puree from a fruit juice concentrate, weakening therefore the position of Moroccan industrials vis-à-vis their foreign competitors (and this list of documented large errors can be extended if needed). So if, with those people who have been empowered to take samples (under very questionable circumstances), there are leaders retired as those mentioned above, that will manage from now on the upstream flow of goods into and out of the Kingdom, the director General of the ONSSA should actually worry in the future. Maybe even more so, in our opinion, for the products that these people can help pass into Morocco than for the goods repressed at the border.
