LISTEN: Health department probing ‘fake food’ allegations
The Department of Health has launched an investigating allegations of so-called fake food being sold
to South African consumers.
Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi told a media briefing on Monday that the investigation started back in August.
“Since January this year the country was hit by an avalanche of food-related videos that are circulating on social media about alleged manufacturing of fake food. It was specifically said that this is done by foreign nationals. Ordinarily we would have dismissed this as fake news, but due to the high volume of complaints received in the past few weeks we took these allegations seriously.”
He said the concept of fake food is new to the department.
The department instructed all 52 district municipalities to inspect the various retailers.
Twelve districts, in the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape, Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and Mpumalanga have concluded their investigations.
“According to the reports, a total of 102 joint operations with SAPS were undertaken and 454 premises have been reached. The operation revealed that 281 premises were operating without valid health certificates, 100 premises were issued with notices to stop operations immediately and 292 premises were found to be non-complaint with hygiene laws,” said Motsoaledi.
He said while over 2000 food items were seized for further investigations, no evidence of fake food was found.
“We are asking for evidence because ever since the saga has started nobody gave us any physical food stuff and said this is fake for us to test. We have just seen pictures and videos on social media. There is nothing else that has been presented, we don’t even know where to start. Hence, we told municipalities to just go out and search all food premises and many of them are just illegal.”