The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A CODE of practice for food hygiene that will govern all businesses and individuals involved with food preparation in the country is among the first three standards set to be adopted and implemented by the Bahamas Bureau of Standards, its director said yesterday.

Renae Ferguson-Bufford told Tribune Business that the bureau was looking to move “full speed ahead” on more standards once it moves into its own Bacardi Road facilities.

Dr Ferguson-Bufford said that that the bureau was making “great strides” and was moving to adopt its first three standards. “They are specifications for bottled water or pre-packaged water, a code of hygiene practice for bottled water, looking at your cleaning process, how your sanitise your bottles, your labs, your warehouses, and the other one would be the code of practice for food hygiene,” she said.

“That is a practice for all businesses in terms of restaurants and anyone involved with food. From making food, to selling food, if you are involved with some type of food processing and handling that would be specifically for you.

“The three standards are in the final phase and these will be the first three national standards for the country. What we are doing now is that we have sent them out and the deadline for comments will be the end of this month.

“Once those comments would have come in we would then collate them, send it back out to the stakeholders for one last time and then we will put it to the standards council which has just been appointed,” Dr Ferguson-Bufford explained.

According to Dr Ferguson-Bufford, the Bureau of Standards is also looking at adopting standards which would address the labelling of pre-packaged goods. “That was a big cry across The Bahamas, both in the public and private sector. That would be the next standard that we are hoping to adopt soon,” she said.

The Standards Bureau, which has to be established as part of the Bahamas’ commitments to membership in rules-based trading regimes such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), is designed to both protect consumers and facilitate trade.

“We are looking at adopting many more standards but we need to get into our building so we can begin to finalise and constitute the more technical committees so we can start looking at the different industries and their priority needs.

“We have lots of standards that our priority needs that the Bahamian people say they want to have adopted. We have a standards working plan and we just want to get to it but we  need to get into the building,” said Dr Ferguson-Bufford.