"For a situation like ours we do need scandals,” says Zeina Kassaify, head of the Lebanon Association for Food Safety (LAFS). The uncovering of caches of expired products in warehouses, poor food preparation procedures in kitchens and generally improper food storage practices may have done the Lebanese economy no favors, says Kassaify, but it did provide a “wake-up call” for the food safety sector. Accordingly, she says there has been an increased interest among restaurant owners in the activities of her organization, founded in 2010, which carries out inspection, monitoring and certification. Nabil Rizkallah, general manager of food safety consultants GWR Consulting, echoes this view, describing a marked uptick in business over the past year, while Paul Ariss, head of the Restaurants Association, reports, “more than 300 ventures have signed contracts with food safety consultants and professionals.” However, while the demand for food safety certification may be on the rise,
Niamh Fleming-Farrell is a former journalist who once worked as a bookseller in Dublin. She founded the Aaliya's Books in 2016 with William Dobson, a writer and English teacher
