Conflict Incident Report

The Health Ministry raided a warehouse stocking and potentially tampering with expired and unlicensed candy in Beirut’s southern suburb of Chiyah Wednesday, one day after a similar raid was conducted on a Pizza Hut storage warehouse in Jounieh. The Daily Star obtained footage and photographs of the raid on Ali Dilbani’s warehouse from a Health Ministry source, where food coloring, candies and biscuits were found with no expiry dates or permits.

Over 26,000 expired candies were found packaged inside boxes that labeled their contents as new.

The source from the Health Ministry told The Daily Star that the storage warehouse had been shut down and sealed with red wax, pending further investigation.

Deputy Prime Minister and Health Minister Ghassan Hasbani Wednesday promised that his ministry would cooperate with other ministries and come down hard on any violators in any sector of the food industry.

“We are following up on food safety ... from the crop grower to the slaughterhouses, the transportation and refrigeration of food as well as storage and restaurants,” Hasbani told reporters, after a Health Ministry committee meeting Wednesday. “This is especially important during the summer [months], holidays and Ramadan when there is an increase in consumption,” Hasbani added.

Speaking of Tuesday’s incident at the Pizza Hut warehouse, Hasbani said that the ministry received a report regarding the manipulation of expiry dates in storage areas. “The inspectors found 2 tons of expired food items – ketchup, mayonnaise and flour,” Hasbani said. “There were also other food items, such as olives, that were not expired but were not stored properly,” he said.

He also said that the ministry was following legal procedures and would take the necessary steps to carry out an investigation. The Economy Ministry would be responsible for disposing of the expired products, Hasbani added.

The health minister voiced his hope that this would be a lesson for other restaurants and food establishments not to compromise the health of Lebanese residents and tourists. “The Health Ministry’s eye will not sleep ... and concerned parties should follow the law 100 percent.”

Despite multiple requests for comment on the raid, Pizza Hut representatives in Lebanon declined to discuss the issue when contacted by The Daily Star. A person answering the company’s 1212 hotline said that the administration would wait for a ruling to be delivered by the judiciary in two to three days, “and you know the rest.”

Hundreds of shops have been warned, closed or forced to adopt stricter regulations as part of the Health Ministry’s ongoing campaign.

The ministry has been pursuing food safety violators since 2015, when then-Health Minister Wael Abu Faour launched an ambitious health safety campaign.

In January, Hasbani told The Daily Star that he would continue and intensify his predecessor’s campaign. “We will be more aggressive now except that it will be standardized, but not in a way that hurts the reputation of the Lebanese restaurant industry. We will expand the crackdown to the entire value chain, not just the restaurants,” Hasbani said at the time, adding that the food industry’s value chain starts at the source, with growers, the pesticides used in agriculture and the storage of products during transportation.

The minister said he wanted to be more severe because of an uptick in cases of health issues that could be linked to different points in the value chain.

In January, Health Ministry inspectors confiscated more than 500 kilograms of expired goods from a produce factory in Sidon.