The strategies of industrialization followed by advanced nations were based on the resources potential that their own countries can offer. For example, France is known to be an agricultural country, and food, by its climate, water resources and because agriculture can be practiced on half of the land area. Also, Germany has found an industrial vocation because the basement was full of coal. It is not possible to believe that during forty years of occupation of Morocco, France did not have time to understand the important potential of agri-food for morocco. Why then, on the eve of his departure (in appearance) from Morocco, France pushed for the emergence of a local pharmaceutical industry instead of a food industry that would have made more sense? This article reflects on why France did those choices that still have an impact on today’s Morocco.
The health elitist sector in Morocco
Among those who have known the period just after independence some may remember that francophone Moroccan elite consisted largely of physicians and pharmacists who have very quickly worked to enact of ad hoc regulations to protect their separate areas yet interdependent. The pharmaceutical unit, as a starting point, sells to the pharmacist who, in turn, needs private or public physicians to sell his pharmaceutical products. It is likely that the reason behind the promotion of the occupier for these training, more than for the food ones, there is the fact that the productive sector of the medication depends almost entirely on outside support, is-to say mainland France in those days and, consequently, it was easier to manage from afar. Indeed, apart from alcohol and sugar, all other raw materials must be imported, preferably via mainland France, as well as equipment and material for work and, occasionally, foreign executives and technicians that were highly paid. These relations were shaped by agreements between the French decision makers and local businesses. As a result, the multitude of French intermediaries had every one a mission to do, and the sharing of substantial profits throughout the process of making the drug. As if all of this could be insufficient, the Moroccan industrials had to carry out their work activity in an almost exclusive reference to the French pharmacopoeia only. In addition, French partners have required most often that they control the products at their level before distributing them in the market. The pharmaceutical sector was therefore closed off in front of other competitors and the French makers skimmed the finances of companies concerned at wish without consideration for the financial burden they posed to the average Moroccan. While I worked in the mid-eighties as “Attaché scientific et administratif” in a pharmaceutical unit of Casablanca, I was informed of the visit of a French expert that I was to receive and give him a tour of the control structures of the company; what I did. The pharmacist in question, moreover very nice, was retired long ago and was not giving the impression of great interest in laboratory control techniques (what supposedly was his official mission) of the time what made the exchange between us very limited. But some time after, following an indiscretion of a manager of financial transfers of the company, I learned that the “expert” had returned to France with a tidy sum in foreign currency, the equivalent to three millions dirhams. It is not clear if the sum was for the expert alone or to give to someone else after deducting a commission.
France, once it has chosen the health sector profiles, has shaped his “contribution” to this sector in the control and expertise has, in fact, made itself master of the purse strings of the Moroccan health sector by all possible means. After several decades of these practices, the prices excessively high of the drugs could no longer be hidden to the Moroccan people. Everyone knows of the outcome, namely the difficulties of Ministry of Health to make accept by the manufacturing drug companies that their prices were abusively very high.
What about the food industry
The first edition of SAM (Salon Alimentaire du Maroc) was in 1996 and we booked a stand in the name of “Cabinet d’expertises Dr Essadki”. At the opening, the conference room was packed with hundreds of people sitting besides those who were standing. After the officials SAM, there were presentations of selected speakers by the organizer. The speech of French guests was greeted with good applauses of the audience. But there were also Americans whose intervention has been referred to the end of the conference day. Furthermore, as if that were not enough, the organizer has set up right on the time slot of the US professional’s speech, in the space just adjacent to the conference room, a generous cocktail to the public. Needless to say, everyone has deserted the hearing. We were only four participants to listen to five Americans, including a woman doing their presentation to a room so empty. But there is no doubt in my mind, someone deliberately premeditated and planned cunningly diverting the hearing before their presentations. As a Moroccan, I was uncomfortable especially considering the effort of those guests to speak French, thing for which I congratulated the lady whose presentation was perfect. Months later, when I had to do, for the court, an inspection of the company COVEM, company of the president at the time of the two federations, FICOPAM (Fédération des Industries de la Conserve des Produits Agricoles du Maroc) and FENAGRI (Fédération Nationale de l’Agroalimentaire) and promoter of SAM Salon, I was received by a French citizen who introduced me to his “boss”, accompanied me for a tour of the unit, gave me all the explanations, responded to my letters, and acknowledged that he was the man in charge for everything in the company and was, beyond that, the president’s adviser. He greeted me a few months later, on the eve of his return to France, giving me that kind of cryptic message “its mission to Morocco was now over.” His boss disappeared from list of officials of both federations mentioned shortly after him.
Unlike the manufacturing of medicines, where the dependence of Morocco for foreign raw materials, and the French Know-how in particular, could put in doubt the advisability of this type of projects for the country; launching an industrialization of agri-food sector should have appeared much more rational and logical. But France had to have reasons, not difficult to find their nature, for not pushing in this direction. In fact, in Maintaining Morocco under the “status of gardener”, penniless as he was at that time, this was actually a godsend for the French agro-industrial. I myself bought in Switzerland in the seventies homegrown fruits and vegetables that were labeled “Origin / France”. With perishable fresh produce, Morocco was, and still continues in some respects, driven to sell his goods quickly, see possibly the sell off to avoid further losses. If we look more closely, although the strategy implemented by France in the case of drug manufacturing was not the same as for agricultural products, both approaches converge in the sense of maximizing profits on both domestic sectors for French operators. But if the bonds of understanding with local pharmaceutical producers were well worked and well oiled, the situation does not appear to have been as optimal with the agri-food operators. From there, probably, acute fear of France to see someone else more powerful put his nose into the business of agriculture in Morocco. The treatment meted to the US delegation in the SAM 1996 must be put on the back of a morbid fear of mainland France to be outdone by the Americans in the national food industry.
The 28-07 Act in all of that
I remember the case of an importer of jam packed (one serving in aluminum) that ran the risk of being put in jail for «non-compliance proven” of his product to the regulations. For such items, which cannot be sterilized in an autoclave, there is the practice of adding a bacteriostatic; sodium benzoate in this case which was not recognized as a food additive under the old law repealed in 2010. To get out of trouble the importer, I had to compare with the regulation of pharmaceutical production where the same sodium benzoate is used in virtually the same dose in making syrup for children. It should be emphasized that the laws regulating the manufacture of jam go back to 1928, i.e. very old and since that time no one has touched it. In this respect, Article 43 of the Enforcement Decree of the current law 28-07 of food safety, recommends to professional organizations in the food industry the writing their own guides of Good Hygiene Practices and Manufacturing by referring, among other things, to relevant codes of practice of the Codex Alimentarius. As a consultant for more than twenty five years, and to this day, I did not see yet the realization of any of these manuals referred to by a professional body. Indeed, these kinds of books are not written like we do for a “people magazine”. The ONSSA has a role to play in this regard. The regulator should roll up his sleeves; write one or several of such manuals that organizations in question can take as model for writing their own. After all, this is part of the work of the ONSSA hitherto, to my opinion, largely imperfect. Without it, the gap between the principles of the 28-07 Act and the daily practices of operators may become larger over time. This is also the price to be paid by the regulator to show everyone that the era of the exploitation of control and expertise on our productive sectors is definitely over.
