Consumer advocates warn of food poisoning in summer

Agadir24

Consumer protection has warned once morest food poisoning during the summer, especially following reports of mass food poisonings in a number of cities in the Kingdom, resulting from eating food in fast food shops.

In this context, human rights activists believe that the numbers of food poisoning are actually greater than what was officially announced, noting that the explanations of specialists and doctors confirm that they increase during the summer, as a result of the rapid spoilage of food, due to the high temperatures.

In response to this issue, the President of the Moroccan Association for Consumer Rights, Bouazza Al-Kharati, stated that “the external food sector is subject to unparalleled chaos, especially since the license to practice the profession is in the hands of politicians, i.e. the heads of the communities,” criticizing “the granting of these licenses to those who do not have any diploma in the sector.”

Al-Kharati explained that there is no mandatory declaration of food poisoning, stressing that “there was previously a ministerial decision obligating any doctor, regardless of who he is, to declare food poisoning, which is not always done, not to mention the number of people who resort to what is called self-medication.”

The same human rights activist criticized the weak monitoring of food preparation and sale to citizens, noting that this situation “harms the image of Morocco, which is expected to organize global events such as the World Cup.”

This comes at a time when news of mass poisonings has recently spread, the latest of which was the one that occurred in Tiznit, in which dozens of people were killed following eating meals at a fast food restaurant. Before that, there was the Marrakesh incident, in which the court of first instance issued a ruling once morest the owner of a “snack” and his assistants, sentencing him to four years in prison and a fine of one thousand dirhams.