Prohibited food entering Kuwait
KUWAIT: The Kuwait Municipality is reportedly working on recalling a shipment of hotdogs that contained traces of pork that was made available at some restaurants according to official reports, amid reactions criticizing the failure of taking effective measures to prevent distribution of such food products to local markets.
“News about prohibited food entering Kuwait is not new, and will continue as long as the government does not make efforts to restructure departments assigned with testing and authorizing of imported products,” said MP Khalid Al- Sultan in a statement Thursday, adding that “strict penalties must be handed over to traders who sell their products before test results are released.”
The Kuwait Municipality closed a store where a shipment of chicken hotdogs ‘mixed with pork and lard”‘ and imported from Brazil was found, announced Mohammad Al-Otaibi, the acting general manager. He told Al-Rai daily that municipality inspectors are working toward recalling around 1,688 large cardboard boxes containing the product which was made available to customers. Meanwhile, Ali Al-Hajri, the head of the Commercial Supervision Department at the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, confirmed to Al-Rai that the boxes were sold to a number of restaurants “before test results confirm whether they are suitable for human consumption were released.”
Al-Hajri added that the trader committed a practice “in violation to Kuwait Municipality regulations,” but added that recalling the items is responsibility of the Municipality which is the body that authorizes entrance of imported food products to the local market. “State departments should bear their responsibilities fully,” said member of the annulled 2012 parliament Mohammad Al-Khalifa, who explained that the recent incident is part of “flaws and negligence that most state departments are guilty of.”
In the meantime, sources familiar with the state’s co-operative societies sector assured that the products could not have reached any of the state’s cooperative societies “because a company cannot supply a product unless it received a written authorization from the Kuwait Municipality.”
