Shopping for expired food

Expired wares at The Consumer Protection Unit

Would you buy your monthly groceries from a vendor on the street? Ketchup, milk powder, Heineken beer? Well it’s all available on the roadsides in Freetown, but there’s just one problem, they’re all expired. Bottles of Heineken labeled ‘Best before May 2009’ are being peddled for pennies now in June. Baby formula that’s about to expire in a couple of weeks in still doing the rounds. And this does not take place in secrecy, every street in the city is lined with people who buy these ‘almost expired’ products from local provision stores and offer them to consumers who are always eager for a good bargain.

So I made a trip to the Consumer Protection Unit (CPU) which is positioned in the epicenter of this, right next to the chaotic Sani Abacha street where the bulk of these goods are sold. The guys up there were thrilled at my questions and brought out their weekly haul of expires for me to photograph. They’ve got volunteers running about the streets trying to communicate the dangers of eating and using expired products to consumers and vendors. But in a poor country like this, most pleas fall on deaf years.

They say that the problem lies at the ports which are crippled by corruption and crates of consumables are often sold off to the highest bidder without proper checks. Africa is well known to be a dumping ground for expired products from around the world and in a country where everyone is out to make a buck, it’s impossible to change the system. The other concern is the porous borders between Guinea and Liberia and the fact that there’s no one monitoring the airport from The Standards Bureau which is responsible for this.

I strolled along Sani Abacha street with a couple of reporters the other day inspecting bottles and cans and questioning puzzled vendors on whether they knew their wares were unsuitable for sale. In some cases packets of biscuits which were clearly past their prime had been stamped with a new expiry date just to render them saleable. Some of the younger vendors shook their heads; the more aggressive and ferocious women shook their fingers and hurled native abuses.

Of course they all know what’s going on. But who is really the victim? The consumer or the vendor, both of whom are lured by bargain basement prices. The CPU is pushing for a Consumer Protection Act which includes among other things, ‘the right to be protected against marketing of or the provision of services that are hazardous to health and human life’ and ‘the right to be protected against dishonest and misleading advertising of labeling’. Drinking expired beer can cause diarrhea and other products can have more serious side effects such as blindness. Although medical services being poor it is difficult to pin down causal links between bad food and poor health.

I’m not sure how much difference consumer protection laws will make. In Sierra Leone laws usually gather dust in thick volumes on a shelf in libraries or lawyers’ offices. Consumer education is the key, but is anyone really listening?