The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The declaration of three approved national standards marks the beginning of “a whole new regime” for the Bahamas, a Cabinet Minister said yesterday, adding that it was another step towards full World Trade Organsiation (WTO) membership accession.

Hope Strachan, minister of financial services, said the new standards for packaged water; a code of hygiene practice for packaged water; and code of practice/general principles for food hygiene are expected to take effect in July 2016.

Mrs Strachan added hat the standards were benchmarked using international guidelines.  The specifications for packaged water, she said, address requirements for “the quality, safety, treatment, bacteriological acceptability, storing, collecting, packaging and labelling of all types of water that are packaged for sale, and used as beverages or used in cooking”.

The code of hygiene practice for packaged water,  said Mrs Strachan, outlines the requirements for collecting, processing, packaging, storing, transporting, distributing and offeing for sale all bottled or packaged drinking water for direct consumption.

Dr Renae Ferguson-Bufford, the Standards Bureau’s chief, said that since the development of packaged water standards, there has been a marked improvement in the packaging and labelling of bottled water in the Bahamas.

As for the code of practice/general principles for food hygiene, Mrs Strachan said these outline “the essential principles of food hygiene within the food chain, from primary production to the final consumer, stipulating the acceptable hygienic conditions for producing food that is safe and suitable for consumption”.

“I believe that this is building capacity for a proper structure and substance for our country going forward, and is very important,” said Mrs Strachan.

“For the most part we have had a pretty safe industry in terms of food production and importation, largely because we import a great amount of food from the United States, where standards are very high.

“Even if we are looking to export food we produce, and access markets worldwide, we are going to have to be able to show that we are also compliant with certain standards.”

Mrs Strachan added: “This is just the beginning of a whole new regime in the Bahamas. We are one of the last countries to actually put in place such a thing. I think it’s timely seeing as how we are now getting into food production for sale to local consumers, as well as exporting to the world.

“The only way we are going to be able to develop that aspect of our economy is to put in place the proper standards, and they have to be benchmarked against other standards in the world for those products to be able to access those markets.”

    As to the enforcement of the standards, Mrs Strachan said will fall under the purview of agencies such as the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Environmental Health Services.

“The Bahamas Bureau of Standards is the agency  that manages, promotes and works towards having the standard declared, but the enforcement agencies will be responsible for market surveillance in terms of monitoring the food that is produced, and that can only be done by examining food as it is imported and as it is produced locally, and that is a hands on task that will require manpower,” said Mrs Strachan.