Dear Editor – As a concerned citizen and consumer of processed goods, I am seriously concern with the fact that unlabeled goods are filling up shop shelves with no hesitation at all from authorities.
If you could take a visit to the shops in the Honiara city, you’ll see that there are process goods that are packed in plastics without labels/description on them.
They filled up shop shelves, placed on the counters and stocked in the deep-freezers.
These includes bread, meat like sausages, chicken, mince, etc. are packed in plastics without trademarks or labels.
It is very important that consumers must know where the goods come from and original instructions and also identify the specification of vitamins, fats and proteins or nutritional substances they contain.
Since different vitamins and proteins are an essential part of what humans eat to help them grow and stay healthy, it is vital that processed goods must contain proper labeling and explanation.
How can you expect consumers’ to identify the nutritional substances of process food/goods when there’s no label on them? This is impossible and must not be accepted.
As the practiced of putting goods without labels or with labels in languages other than English, it is now important that responsible authorities must step up their efforts to ensure goods sold in the shops are genuine or manufactured from genuine firms and are correctly labeled.
As a consumer, I need to know where those processed goods are manufactured, are they manufactured by a genuine company (s)? How safe are they? What nutritional substances are they contain? What are they made of? Are they of good quality? etc.
These are some of the simple questions consumers need to ask themselves before purchasing such unlabeled goods.
It is health risk to buy and eat what we don’t know or when there’s no specification is tagged on the products.
Another issue of concern is goods are labeled in foreign language, especially, the Asian products, making it more difficult to understand. And also these Asian products are of low standard.
The government and responsible authority (s) needs to wake up from their nap and do something to control the influx of these kinds of goods.
Stephen Abumea
Honiara
