oct 13
An official of the Tagum City-based Bureau of Food and Drugs satellite office bared Saturday that they are not yet checking food products being sold in stores in the city even those already tagged as laced with melamine without the directive of the BFAD central office.
Speaking during the “Ipalanog sa Katawhan” press forum of the Davao del Norte Press, Radio and TV Club, Inc., (DNPRC) last Saturday at Cevannah Bar Café and Restaurant, Engr. Cely Hortiza said that even those brands already identified by BCAD national office to be laced with melamine they still have to await for specific order and guidelines on what particular batch or lot where the adulterated products belong before going to stores to take them out from the shelves.
Hortiza is the chief of the food and chemistry section of the BFAD Satellite Laboratory for Mindanao, the only one BFAD laboratory in the Mindanao where laboratory analysis is made for samples taken by inspectors from the five regional offices in the island.
She said that at press time only at least three food products have yet been tagged by the BFAD national office as laced with melamine.
“We are still awaiting results from Manila BFAD laboratory from the over 100 samples taken by inspectors in the region from various food products we sent there for melamine content testing,” she said.
“We still have no particular machine for it which costs about P15 million,” she said.
Hortiza, a chemical engineer, said that melamine is supposed to be non-food ingredient, “a mixture to cement” that if taken by non-adults like children could result to death owing to their “low tolerable level” on the melamine content. “Taking it will result to manggahi ang inyong atay,” she said.
She also said that the it is not the role of the BFAD to check the nutritional facts of all products that enter the country like those China-made foodstuffs, adding that BFAD only conducts special tests when there is adverse happening like the previous cases involving China-made food products mixed with the carcinogenic “magic sugar” and the one mixed with the paper cartons. “These are all motivated by profit motive.”
On unsanitary food products being locally sold like the sidewalk lechon that gathers so much dust by the noontime, Hortiza said has BFAD has no police power to seize it. “Rather it belongs to the sanitary inspector,” she said.
On the same gathering, Cesar Cuntapay, president of the Tagum Consumers Association, Inc., said that in their recent monitoring their group has not yet heard complaints relating melamine from China-made products being sold in stores and malls in the city. (Cha Monforte/Rural Urban News) http://ruralurbanews.blogspot.com
Filed under: bfad tagum office, cesar cuntapay, bfad tagum office, cesar cuntapay tagum, melamine tagum
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