Let's enforce Panama's food labeling laws

They were “the perfect snack to satisfy your cheese craving,” said the package. They were Frito-Lay Cheddar & Sour Cream Ruffles, tasty flavored potato chips --- the export version, according to the package --- made in Plano, Texas and bought at a mini-super in Panama City. The purchaser was very satisfied with the product.

But of course, this purchaser reads English.

On the back of the package, the ingredients, from potatoes down to disodium guanylate, were listed in English only. So was the bold and capitalized warning, “CONTAINS MILK INGREDIENTS.”

Have you ever seen a child with food allergies react to something that he or she shouldn’t eat? It might be gas and a bellyache and diarrhea. Or, in a matter of minutes, the kid might get bags under the eyes and go into a screechy hyperactive fit. It’s not pleasant, either for the child or the adult who is caring for the child.

Dairy products, of course, are one of the most common foods that some people can’t tolerate.

The protection of people with lactose intolerance and various food allergies is the main reason why Panamanian consumer laws require that the ingredients of processed foods must be labeled in Spanish.

It is also a matter of respect for Panama’s religious minorities, so that Jews, Muslims and Seventh Day Adventists don’t unwittingly eat pork products, and observant Hindus aren’t tricked into eating beef.

Frito-Lay is a subsidiary of the large multinational Pepsico conglomerate, and surely at or around its plant in Texas there are plenty of Spanish-speaking people who could translate the list of ingredients for a bag of chips that’s bound for Latin America.

But let us not malign Frito-Lay or Pepsico. It is the Panamanian government that won’t enforce this country’s laws. Mireya Moscoso and the people she has appointed to the Free Trade and Consumer Affairs Commission (CLICAC), the Ministry of Agricultural Development, and Customs are simply not doing their jobs.

Ironically, if one actually takes the time to read the plaques at that hideous work of Colombian socialist realism, the Arnulfo Arias monument across from the Balboa YMCA, one will notice a strange characterization of the most infamous thing that Mireya’s late husband ever did. He stripped all Panamanians of Asian, Middle Eastern or Afro-Antillean ancestry of their citizenship, and that garish monstrosity obliquely refers to that human rights violation as the “defense of the Spanish language.”

So where is the defense of the Spanish language --- and the enforcement of Panamanian consumer laws --- when it becomes a real issue for people who can’t tolerate milk products?

Yes, because Panama is The Crossroads of the World it is a matter of great economic importance for our people to be literate and conversant in more than one language. But Panamanian citizens shouldn’t have to be able to read English, Chinese or some language other than Spanish to understand the ingredient labels on foods for sale in this country’s stores.

editorial

Yum --- cheddar chips

Bear in mind...