New food safety law proposed

Experts say application mechanisms are needed

A draft law proposal on food safety was recently sent to Parliament by MP Atef Majdalani, president of the parliamentary commission for public health.

“The proposal focuses on establishing an autonomous national food administration for inspecting and monitoring the whole process of food delivery, from farms and factories to end-consumers,” Majdalani said. A similar draft law was proposed by late Minister of Economy Bassel Fleihan in 2003. The proposal never made it through.

According to Majdalani, the draft also calls for establishing a committee, chaired by the Minister of Agriculture, to generate more efficient policies.

The proposal will soon be submitted to the pertinent parliamentary committees, before being referred to the general assembly for approval.

“There is no unified law on food safety,” said Zeina Kassaify, president of the Lebanese Association for Food Safety (L.A.F.S.). She said each ministry has set its own regulations, some of which dating back to 1960: “Some of those regulations have gaps or overlap, which makes it even more difficult to control food safety.”

Kassaify said unifying the laws is not enough. “The problem is in finding an efficient mechanism to apply the laws and ensure their full implementation,” she said.