Opinion • February 1 2004

Do not buy Maltese!

Anna Mallia defends the small man against the ‘unfair’ law enforcer

Mr Wise Guy had the brilliant idea to produce local tea. He wanted his product to be better than the Ceylon or Indian tea and included in the label therapeutic effects which were all false. He marketed the product and his agents started selling it to the local grocers. Needless to say the health authorities confiscated the product and charges were pressed against Mr Wise Guy. So far so good.
But the health authorities went one step further and prosecuted also the retailers who sold the product accusing them of misleading the consumer and selling a product with false information on the label quoting legal notices 5 of 2002 and 247 of 1998.
To add insult to injury not only were the retailers prosecuted but they were not refunded for the tea bought from Mr Wise Guy.

The Implications
The implications of these regulations are that retailers can only buy products whose labels are genuine and not misleading. It is their responsibility to check all the labels of the local products because they will face prosecution if they sell a product that contains false information on the label. Can you imagine Frank the grocer checking and verifying the ingredients of all the local products before placing an order?
This is totally absurd. The work that ought to be done by the authorities in the first place is shifted on to the retailers. The health authorities cannot expect retailers to do their job and vet every local product they sell to see if it is genuinely labeled. First of all they do not have the know-how and secondly every retailer who is offered a product for sale genuinely believes that that product is not misleading.
The other serious implication concerns the consumers. The present regulations protect consumers only after a local product is discovered by the health authorities to be misleading. The law offers them no protection before such product is put on the market. The regulations deal with the aftermath meaning that the health of the consumers is also at risk.
From the onset the authorities in the first place should not and cannot allow any Maltese product to be a health risk. The only way they can do this is to make certification of all Maltese products mandatory before they are placed in circulation. It is odd that for foreign products the authorities ask for all sorts of documentation and certificates and rightly so, whereas in the case of local produce anything goes.
The situation urgently calls for a structure by which local produce will have to pass the necessary tests and get the certification before it is sold to consumers. We have had local energy drinks which were not energy drinks at all. We have had local mineral water which has no mineral at all. And yet, so far nobody has had the courage to take the initiative and stop this abuse by making certification of local products mandatory.

The GRTU
I am surprised that to date the GRTU has not reacted to the injustices that many retailers are facing. I suggest that the Union should come to the Health sitting in Court and hear the plight of these people unable to understand how the law can make them liable for something that they did not commit and hopelessly pleading to the Court that they have suffered damages because the product was confiscated and Mr Wise Guy would not re-imburse them. Intention in these offences does not play a part at all – what matters to the health authorities is that the product was bought and sold by the retailer.

Change the regulations
It is true that the court is lenient towards these offences because it knows that the retailers are not to blame. But that is not the way to go about such a serious issue. It is also true that criminal charges were instituted against the producer. It is about time the regulations are amended so that producers are made liable for damages caused to retailers and consumers by selling products that are not genuine.
Unless we amend these regulations it is only natural for retailers not to buy Maltese products for retail.

No to double standards
My advise to retailers and consumers alike is not to buy Maltese products until they get the certification and the same treatment as imported products from the Maltese authorities. The grocer in the village square cannot guarantee to the consumer that local products he sells are genuine; he cannot afford to waste time and money in Court; admission to the charges is no guarantee that he will not be charged again for other local products that the health authorities may eventually discover to be misleading to the consumers; and the consumers have no guarantee that the local products are all genuine.
With this scenario in mind, the health authorities cannot continue to set their conscience at rest and convince us that they are truly and really safeguarding our health by prosecuting the grocer for selling such products. If they want to do a good job they know they must press for legislation so that nothing that is produced locally can be sold before it gets their rubber-stamp.
This time it was tea and no food poisoning occurred. Next time it can be something else and a tragedy can occur. In the meantime we cannot allow the retailers and the consumers to suffer because of the inaction of the health authorities and the greed of people like Mr Wise Guy.
So, until certification for local products becomes mandatory, do not sell or buy Maltese!