Abou Faour Warns against Threatening State as Shehayeb Vows to Fix Milk Prices
Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayeb and Health Minister Wael Abou Faour held a joint press conference on Thursday over the food safety scandal, warning the owners of dairy factories that the state will not yield to their threats.
“We will not allow anyone pressure the state and the small producers... Greed is forbidden,” Abou Faour told reporters in comments on the protesters carried out by dairy farmers across the country last week over the fall in milk prices.
The farmers said last week during protests that the closure of labneh factories in the Bekaa was the main reason behind the drop in prices, dumping milk on the roads.
Economy Minister Alain Hakim ordered last week the closure of several labneh factories in the Bekaa valley for violating food safety regulations, causing a fall in the prices of the 1 liter of milk.
Abou Faour told reporters that the state will not yield to the demands of the violating owners of cheese and labneh factories.
Minister Shehayeb said that the dairy factories should abide by the safety regulations when manufacturing labneh and write the ingredients on the boxes.
He pointed out that the Economy and Labor ministries will hold a press conference on Monday to fix milk prices at LL1,100 after the prices fell to LL500.
Abou Faour also stressed that the “food safety campaign will continue and will not fade with time.”
“It's not a circumstantial campaign and takes a new perspective day after day,” he added.
Abou Faour said that health inspectors visited five mills located in the capital Beirut, and four of them turned out to be violating health safety conditions.
For his part, Shehayeb revealed that his ministry gave halawa and tahini factories until the end of December to rectify their conditions, warning of the measures that will be taken against violators.
H.K.
M.T.
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