Some hypermarts selling expired goods, warns Fomca

Federation of Malaysian Consumers Associations (Fomca) has urged the authorities to take action against hypermarkets carrying expired items or food items without an expiry date on their shelves.

Earlier this month, Fomca had inspected the five hypermarkets operated by three Malaysia's biggest hypermarket operators and discovered 75 food items expired items in total, Fomca director of communications T Saravanan told a press conference today.

"Seventy five expired items were collected from the hypermarkets. Some of the items do not have expiry dates on it, how can there be no expiry dates on the food? We do not know how long the food had been on the shelves.

"The best part of it is that (some of) the items were collected from the hypermarket's headquarters in the urban areas and we haven’t look in the rural areas yet," said Saravanan.

The 75 items collected were displayed during the press conference. Among the items were dairy products, frozen food, snacks, vegetables, eggs, meat, cakes and drinks.

The names of the three hypermarkets are being withheld pending their response to queries from Malaysiakini.

Saravanan warned that expired goods pose a health hazard to consumers and lead to food poisoning, such as in the case of a kenduri in Tanjung Dawai, Kedah where four people died and 270 people fell sick.

Enforce the laws

He urged the health ministry and the domestic trade and consumer affairs ministry to spring into action and punish errant hypermarket operators.

"Fomca wants to call the health ministry to strictly enforce the Food Regulations 1985, so that all expired products are immediately removed from the shelves.

"If any outlet continues to sell expiry goods, strict and heavy penalty and disciplinary action should be taken on them. The health ministry must go down and make sure those premises do not sell expire products," he said.

Saravanan said the healthy ministry must enforce the law, in particular Regulations 9 (General requirements of labelling of food), Regulations 13 (Size and colour of letters) and Regulations 14 (Marking of expiry dates on food packets).

"They can print the food logo and it's nutritional value so clear and big on the packet, but why can't they put expiry dates in bigger font? If possible, it is better to permanently print the expiry date in front of the packet with the logo," urged Saravanan.

In addition, Saravanan calls for all consumers to play a role by checking for expiry dates before purchasing an item.

"We (Fomca) urge all consumers who come across expired items, firstly to report to the hypermarket authorities and secondly report to Fomca.

"We need a collective voice in this matter for us to produce good statistics and data of this issue. It will helped us to give better recommendations to the healthy ministry," said Saravanan.