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Outdated food haul at Mattakkuliya
By Frances Bulathsinghala
Thousand kilos of outdated meat, over one hundred kilos of ice cream and cheese were detected yesterday at a warehouse in Mattakkuliya. Yesterday's detection was made following the busting of a large-scale racket importing date-expired food, including a large quantity of infants' food, earlier in the week.

These food items, with new dates printed on the packing, were to have been distributed to food outlets, mainly leading supermarkets throughout the country, Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Pradeep Kariyawasam said.

The warehouse in Mattakuliya contained around 18,000 food items. A total of 183 varieties of canned foods such as milk products, cordials, biscuits and canned food were destroyed on Thursday. The estimated worth of the products was ten million rupees.

"This has clearly gone on for some time. We acted on a petition to the police to raid the warehouse. It took us a while to discover the warehouse as it is surrounded by high walls and even those residing near the building were unaware it was a warehouse", Dr. Kariyawasam told 'The Sunday Times'.

The Bloemendhal Police who had investigated the tip-off last week had found that twenty persons were employed to remove the original date from the package of the food items and to print new dates in their place.

Meanwhile, the team of Public Health Inspectors who arrived on Friday at the cold rooms of the three storied warehouse, completely walled out from public scrutiny, was faced with the problem of finding land to bury the seized products. 10,000 items had already been buried in Kadawatha but new locations had yet to be found, Dr. Kariyawasam said.

According to him the original expiry dates of most of the products were 2003. Samples of all the products have been sent to the Government Analyst for further examination.

With this latest discovery of outdated food flooding the country, continuous investigations would be carried out to ensure that the consumer was protected, Dr. Kariyawasam said.

The main authorities responsible for the supervision of food items imported to the country are the Customs Authority at the Colombo Port and a unit of the Health Ministry located at the Port. The last large-scale racket discovered was nearly two years ago at a five-star hotel found serving contaminated food.

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