Drink banned in Malawi is safe, insists Mozambican manufacturer

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Drink banned in Malawi is safe, insists Mozambican manufacturer

8:42 CAT | 18 Nov 2016

Laboratory analyses prove that soft drinks of the brand Frozy, produced in the southern Mozambican city of Matola, are safe, and within international standards, declared the administrator of the Frozy production factory, Rossana Sadula, on Thursday, cited by the independent television station STV.

She was speaking to reporters during a visit to the factory by the Deputy Ministers of Health and of Industry and Trade, Mouzinho Saide and Ragendra de Sousa.

In late October, the Malawian Bureau of Standards (MBS) banned all imports of Frozy drinks on health grounds. The main reason given for the ban is allegedly high levels of citric acid and sodium benzoate in the drinks. The MBS claimed that the level of citric acid in the drinks ranged from 2,240 to 5,376 mg/kg compared with a permitted maximum of 3,000 mg/kg.

However, according to Saide, the real permitted levels of citric acid are from 0.1 to 0.5 mgs per 100 millilitres, and the Frozy drinks are within this range.

Sadula said the company which makes the drinks, Yaafico Industrial, requested analyses of Frozy from four Mozambican and international laboratories. This was in addition to the daily analyses made in the factory’s own laboratory. The most important of the outside analyses was by Merieux Nutrisciences in Italy, which uses the same parameters as Malawi.

“All these analyses gave the same results – they proved that our products are within the national and international standards”, she said.

Ragendra de Sousa said that, while it was up to the company to work with Malawi, the government would work on the institutional side to ensure compliance with the trade protocol of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

“If we receive what is made in the other states, we have the right to demand that they receive what we produce”, he pointed out. “We are here to work towards solutions that satisfy both sides”.

Source: AIM