Egypt to keep track of food establishments

CAIRO – 6 June 2017: The Food Safety Unit in the Ministry of Trade and Industry has started keeping track of food establishments such as factories, warehouses, and shops working in food industries all over Egypt to ensure they are licensed, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm.

The unit’s head, Hussein Mansour, stated in a Ramadan ceremony held by the Consumer Protection Agency in Egypt on Sunday that they finished tracking six governorates in Upper Egypt. The goal of these measures is to detect establishments working in the informal sector in order to legalize their work and join the formal sector.

As Al-Masry Al-Youm reported, Mansour revealed that most food establishments work in the informal sector which puts the health of the consumers at risk. Those entities offer cheap products that are very low in quality and that do not meet the standards and criteria of the industry. Mansour said this would be remedied when such establishments are put under the state’s supervision.

Mansour added that once the board of the National Food Safety Authority is formed, it will put the public policies ensuring food safety, and supervision of the different stages in food production, into effect. As a consequence, the quality of food products will be higher increasing Egypt’s competitive advantage and boosting its export opportunities.

Rana El Gamal, member of the Chamber of Food Industries’ board, stated that the informal sector contributes 70 – 80 percent of the tota food industry in Egypt, according to the state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram.