Poetic Justice

A couple of months back, I wrote about my concerns about melamine and the Ministry of Health’s equivocal stand about the issue.

In one of the posts, I pointed out that if MOH is responsible in ensuring compliance with the Food Act and its regulations, then the MOH should NOT rely on warranties from importers, manufacturers etc to confirm that the product in question is melamine free.

After all, MOH is the nation’s watchdog when it comes to compliance with the relevant regulations and it cannot perform that role merely by choosing to rely on some so called warranty. It must perform its own analysis before being able to say with any degree of certainty that such and such a product or item is safe for consumption.

Reza, a commenter who ambles his way every now and then to this blog, pointed out that there are just too many items to be tested if we insist on this. His sentiments found further credence if we go by the contents of this article in the News Straits Times. Essentially, the article confirms that Malaysia has too few skilled personnel and far too few specialised machines to perform the necessary tests.

Only thing is while I can accept that the necessary infrastructure for testing and analysis may be lacking, I cannot accept that the status quo need not be changed.

Still, while this debate rages on, it would be good to know in the interim whether MOH carries out any cross checking on the so called warrantied products – specifically whether the warranties have stood up to testing carried out by other health ministries.

Mind you, only credible ones need apply. Which also means China’s Health Ministry is excluded. We know where they stand.