It has happened to all of us. Between the daily dynamics of buying a necessary product, the little habit of examining it as it should and the scarcity of variety in the Cuban market, we often look only at the price and almost never at the expiration date of what we take home and then cook, eat or use as medicine.
The phenomenon is national, dangerous and must be taken seriously. All the more so now that the most widespread forms of commercialization in the absence of state provision are the new economic actors: MSMEs, non-agricultural cooperatives and self-employed workers who import food and medicines to sell on the domestic market.
There are many examples that we can mention: Powdered milk, cookies for children, soft drinks, flour, sausages, tomato puree, pills, ointments, and a long etcetera, which, depending on their expiration date, as conceived by the manufacturer, can trigger reactions among consumers, such as outbreaks of diarrhea, intoxications, or other health complications, which can have an impact at the social level, depending on the massive use in a given locality, municipality, or province.
And who is to blame? Here, unlike the song of the group Buena Fe, it is located with names and surnames. At the same time that tax payments and other papers are being checked, we should also be more rigorous with this issue, because it could have implications in an epidemiological situation of medium or large proportions. Of course, there are other variables in this analysis.
On numerous occasions, the aforementioned economic agents buy the cheapest products abroad, which, by the way, have these prices because they are about to expire. Then, the time it takes to import them into our country conspires against them, and when the time comes to put them on sale, the phenomenon described above occurs. In Cuba, few of us pay attention to control this practice, which exists internationally and even with severe measures for retail or wholesale markets that do not comply.
Is it time to sort this out along with other distortions that have been identified? Will we have to wait for a tragic or major health event to wake up both consumers and regulators of commercial activity? All in all, a word of advice: check the product well and do not get carried away by cheapness, because it can cost you dearly, but very dearly for your health.
