Warehouses storing expired food items closed

In a major crackdown, inspection teams from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in Riyadh have closed down two warehouses storing tainted and expired food products which were later repacked in empty bottles of known brands and sold off to retail stores.

The business was run by an Arab expatriate who collected food products past their sell-by date from markets and repacked them to be sold again.

The inspection teams seized around 20,000 contaminated products of which some 12,000 food items including milk, powder milk, oils, rice, mayonnaise, tea and as many as 6,500 detergents and cleaning products were found in the warehouses which were shut down.

The teams raided the warehouses following a tip-off notifying them of the site which was being used for storing food of inferior quality. After monitoring the site for several days and conducting investigations which included tracking the suspicious activities of an expatriate worker, the teams discovered that the man was in violation of the commercial laws.

The worker would collect the expired food items from markets in Riyadh, Dammam and Hafr Al-Batin. He would then store them in unhygienic conditions before masking their defects and repacking them to sell them back to the markets.

The expatriate worker and his accomplices were arrested and an investigation is now under way.

During the last few months, the ministry has conducted several inspections which have resulted in the confiscation of large quantities of fake food products of famous brands.

The items were found in warehouses and apartments rented for fraudulent purposes by expat labor workers.

The Ministry of Commerce has confirmed its zero-tolerance policy on fraud and jeopardizing consumers’ health and safety and has called on consumers to reach out to the complaint center at 1900 to report any complaint or violation.