University of Pretoria expert on food safety and regulatory control, Prof Lise Korsten, has called on the government to develop a robust regulatory framework for food safety that is effectively communicated, fairly implemented and enforced by appropriate entities with the necessary training.
She was addressing parliament’s portfolio committee on agriculture on Tuesday after at least 22 school-going children died across SA after consuming snacks bought from spaza shops last year.
By December 2024 there were at least 890 incidents of food-borne illnesses reported across all provinces, with Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal the worst affected, while Limpopo, Free State and Mpumalanga recorded dozens of incidents.
The government allocated R15m for rapid testing of suspected contaminated food products and setting up a R500m fund to support spaza shops and other businesses in the townships and rural areas.
Korsten said the state must develop a food safety policy and food safety authority, among other interventions. It also needed to invest in capacity development at all levels, including inspectors/regulators, lab technicians, researchers and risk assessors.
Investigations into the deaths revealed poor waste management and unregulated use of pesticides, such as aldicarb and terbufos, she said. In his address to the nation on November 15 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa said: “After stringent testing, a chip packet found on one of the children who had died had traces of terbufos on both the inside and outside the packet.”
Korsten said Terbufos had been found in spaza shops and food items that led to at least 24 children dying and dozens hospitalised with symptoms, including stomach pains, across the country.
She criticised the inadequate food safety standards across spaza shops and informal food vendors, with food “being stored besides pesticides and detergents”.
Korsten said: “If it’s not safe, it’s not food.” She drew comparisons between the formal fresh produce sector and the informal one, saying the former had self-regulatory systems and complied with Global GAP [Good Agricultural Practice], while the latter remained unregulated, with no access to waste removal, no pesticide spray monitoring and no access to potable water or good hygiene/sanitation.
“Food must be seen as important asset to achieve health and wellbeing. People must not be exposed to fast ffoods ... we must change the people’s mindsets,” Korsten said. She also differentiated between formal and informal food systems, saying the former pertained to the legal importation of food, food depots/warehouse before reaching the consumer, while the latter was characterised by “illegal movement of foods”, which were either stolen or written off and then sold in pavement shops/street vendors to the lower-income groups.
In his November address Ramaphosa called on all spaza shops to be registered by December 17, though the deadline was subsequently extended to February 28 2025.
Ramaphosa ordered the immediate closure of all spaza shops implicated in the deaths of children linked to food poisoning after an unusually high number of children and adults died after ingesting food from spaza shops across the country.
The government has since classified the health crisis as a national disaster.
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