Forum blasts minister over listeriosis speech

THE Red Meat Industry Forum has slammed Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi’s speech on the listeriosis outbreak this week, claiming the minister misinformed the public.

The forum is a representative body for the country’s entire red meat value chain.

“The RMIF and its member organisations, including the South African Meat Processor’s Association (Sampa), representing the meat processing and related sectors, are deeply concerned that the entire processed meat industry has been implicated without justification,” reads a statement released by RMIF.

In the statement, the forum raised the concern that Motsoaledi’s speech, where he cited polony and other processed meat products from the Enterprise Foods factory as one of the sources for the major outbreak, “lacked detail”.

RMIF chairman Dave Ford warned consumers not to accept that contamination could come only from the facilities implicated in the minister’s speech and said the bacterium is widely distributed in nature, occurring commonly in the environment.

He urged the department to consider environmental factors to link the outbreak.

“The media, consumers, retailers and many other stakeholders in the industry have picked up on this part of the department’s statement leading to a plethora of misinformation, factually incorrect statements and general confusion in the meat industry – the implications of which have been a dramatic decline in sales in the industry,” he said.

Ford said they were disturbed by Motsoaledi’s statement where he said: “We advise the public to avoid all processed meat products that are sold as ready-to-eat.”

National Health Department spokesman Popo Maja said the department had not seen the statement released by the RMIF so they couldn’t give a response.