When two separate shipments of spoiled Indian meat were detected by inspectors at Beirut Port in June, the government was quick to claim that the successful police intervention proved the meat safety “system” in Lebanon worked well.

“Everything is under control. There is no bad meat in the country,” said Ali Hassan Khalil, the agriculture minister, in a statement to the press.

Critics, however, including fed-up members of the meat industry itself, were not as confident. For some, the 250 tons of spoiled meat that rotted away at the Port for several weeks before being shipped back to India was just one indication of a much larger problem. Lebanon, the critics said, still had a long way to go in meeting rigorous, international health and safety standards when it comes to meat.

By mid July, the government seemed to agree. After an intense press conference by the Cattle and Butchers Syndicate, and public scorn from the nascent public watchdog group Consumers Lebanon, both of which pointed to previous shipments of spoiled meat from India, the government issued a ban on all imports of Indian meat – which is to go into effect in mid September since some shipments from India were already en route when the decision was made.

In taking such sweeping action, the government grudgingly fell, at least partly, into line with the EU, which has for years banned meat imports from India because of health and safety concerns. Although the Lebanese government had long argued that the UN deemed Indian meat safe – claiming that the EU’s actions were more about protecting their own domestic meat industry – the twin incidents of spoiled meat seemed to raise enough concern about the costs of continuing to do business with the country, considering that Lebanon imported 75% of all frozen meat consumed last year (6,841 tons out of 9,124 tons in all).

Of course, the decision was not easy – frozen meat from India costs about $1.5 per kilogram, less than chilled meat from Brazil or Paraguay, which costs $3 per kilogram, and substantially less than fresh meat from live European cattle, which costs $5 per kilogram.

Since Lebanese SHAWARMA, as but one example, is primarily made from frozen Indian buffalo meat (cows are sacred in most Indian states), the inescapable political reality is that it’s only a matter of time before the Lebanese consumer feels the pinch. As one industry source explained, “The demand for cheaper and cheaper meat, like from India, has grown steadily, just as the old sources of meat have become more expensive.” Indeed, faced with growing price differentials, the composition of the Lebanese meat diet has changed considerably over the last decade. In fact, some observers now estimate that 15% of all meat consumed in Lebanon is frozen, 25% chilled, and about 50% fresh. Rewind to ten years ago and about 75% of all meat at the dinner table was fresh, derived from live cattle slaughtered locally. Frozen meat represented only a small part of the market.

Live cattle is still Lebanon’s number one commodity import, ahead of cigarettes, at a total value of $135 million last year, but imports of frozen meat from India have risen by 27% and 57% in 2002 and 2003, respectively. Added to this is the fact that nearly 95% of all meat needs are now being met by overseas sources. Gone are the days when Lebanon had a thriving domestic livestock system.

For some critics, the government’s decision to halt the increasing stream of Indian meat imports appeared to offer tacit acknowledgement that, even though inspectors ostensibly discovered the spoiled meat, some risk was present that the meat might have entered the marketplace – health and safety controls, these critics said, were not as strong as the government claimed.

According to one industry source, who, like most wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, the spoiled Indian meat caught at the Port had actually been turned away from Jordan the previous week. When it arrived in Beirut, it was actually a competitor who tipped off ministry of agriculture inspectors that the meat was bad. A top official close to the issue disputed this notion though, saying that international sampling procedures were used on all meat imports, which includes taking a piece from the front, middle and back of each 22 ton container of frozen or chilled meat that arrives in Lebanon and testing it for bacteriological and viral contaminants. The government official was confident that the three inspectors assigned to test meat and monitor livestock at the Syrian borders, the airport and the Port would have caught the spoiled meat. However, according to the industry source, the government does not have enough inspectors to check the multitude of shipments that arrive each day in Lebanon, some of which, the Cattle Syndicate argued publicly, bear false or misleading certificates of origin, validity, and composition, further complicating the process. As the industry source put it tersely, “I don’t let my children eat meat unless I have seen the cow myself.”

Indeed, according to several industry sources as well as top government officials and at least one international expert, the government’s action against Indian meat really should be seen as a kind of surface maneuver, one that deferred, or anticipates (depending on how you look at it), the more difficult kinds of systematic reforms that are needed throughout the meat sector in order to ensure that Lebanese consumers are adequately protected. The reason for this sentiment is threefold: first, Lebanon currently has no food safety law protecting consumers, nor does it have an integrated system for measuring outbreaks of food borne illnesses or problems that occur at meat facilities. One can only wonder if this lack of statistics is why even critics of government food safety practices are also usually quick to assert that the Lebanese don’t really get sick from meat. (Of course, the 60 people recently sickened by a meat borne E-Coli outbreak at two separate wedding banquets in Lebanon would probably disagree.)

Second, the central government has little control over the 40 or so slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities in the country – nearly half of which are essentially unlicensed, despite handling nearly half of the 40,000 tons of meat consumed in Lebanon each year. Since municipalities control and monitor the slaughterhouses that lie within their own jurisdictions, a patchwork of irregular standards and procedures has emerged that inhibits industry wide surveillance and early warning measures. This chaotic situation has even led the Cattle and Butchers Syndicate to call for the closing of the main slaughterhouse serving Beirut, the Quarantine, saying that only a completely new facility could meet modern health and safety standards. As one top official closely involved with the issue put it bluntly, “The slaughterhouses present a serious problem.”

Such a conclusion is not altogether surprising, especially when considering that, as one representative from the ministry of economy and trade – the agency charged with inspecting slaughterhouses, processing plants and meat products – acknowledged, “We do not have enough inspectors.” Add to this the fact that the agency acts primarily as a “complaint driven” institution and what you have is a situation where the Lebanese consumer is left to trust an industry with little in the way of uniform, transparent standards and practices, not to mention vigorous oversight separate from local interests. Third, in banning meat imports from India, the government avoided dealing with the issue of Paraguayan meat, which the EU bans on similar grounds as Indian meat (10% of all chilled meat imports are from Paraguay, with the other 90% from Brazil). This concern may not be a factor for much longer though, as several sources closely involved in the issue predicted that it would only be a matter of weeks before meat from Paraguay was also banned. Despite the problems and late-inning measures, it appears that Lebanon is finally moving ahead with reforms in the meat sector. Both the ministries of agriculture and economy, in addition to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, are pushing forward a food safety law that will help Lebanon gain World Trade Organization membership, as well as better protection for consumers. Significantly, the draft law, which is expected to be taken up by parliament during the next session, aims to centralize authority over the various elements in the meat industry through a Lebanese Food Safety Agency. That body will, hopefully, put in place the law’s new standards and guidelines as well as serve as a proactive monitoring and enforcement regime for all levels of the meat industry. While stressing that the proposal was “excellent” and met the highest international standards, one non-governmental expert involved in the effort acknowledged that centralizing authority over what is now a sprawling web of interests involving butchers, supermarkets, slaughterhouses, ports and processing plants would be a “big challenge.” Either way, it’s a challenge that has clearly been made less daunting in the wake of the spoiled meat flap. According to Zuheir Berro, Consumers Lebanon’s executive director, the momentum couldn’t have come any sooner. In mid July, barely one month after the Indian meat seizures, the ministry of agriculture announced that 25 tons of spoiled fish had been detected and seized at Beirut Port. In one published report, a ministry source said that the importer of the fish was the same one who had tried to bring the spoiled Indian meat into the country in June. “There is an international mafia with connections inside Lebanon” facilitating the entry of spoiled meat, said Berro. “And we have no food safety law. Enough is enough. We need reform now.”

In the wake of criticism from a wide array of religious and political leaders, threats of an outright ban, and the very public defacement of certain controversial images from Tyre to Tripoli, the outdoor advertising industry appears ready to engage in a bit of belated self-regulation. To understand exactly what this will mean, EXECUTIVE sat down with Antonio Vincenti, CEO of the billboard giant Pikasso, who has been at the forefront of efforts to repair the industry’s own image.

Q: Describe Pikasso’s current role in the regional advertising marketplace.

A: We are in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq – Iraq since January. We have forty competitors, more or less, in Lebanon and forty in Jordan and we are the largest company in Lebanon. What we do is rent locations from municipalities or from landlords, we install the boarding and then we rent it by creating networks.

Q: What is at the center of the controversy over outdoor advertising in Lebanon?

A: In a country where you have 17 communities living together, I think we must, if we want to preserve civil peace, respect the beliefs of all of the 17 communities. Now, where does the border stand between what is permitted and what is not permitted? Thank God, general security has a very open minded attitude. Since the beginning of the year (when they became the official censor), we have never had any problem with general security. And I can tell you that they are very liberal in their way of guarding permits. What does this mean? It means we should be very responsible toward this open-minded attitude of the censor. If we say, yes we have had a problem with religious authorities, but we have the permit from general security, then the attitude of general security the next day is to refuse all visuals or half of them, whenever they feel as though they will have the smallest problem – which is a pity. That is why we need to have self-censorship, self regulation – a logical attitude. You know you have visuals you should not accept and you should not accept them nor you should post them.

Q: What will self-regulation entail exactly?

A: After the Association for the Defense of Moral Values in Lebanon asked the justice minister to [crack down] on certain billboards. I advised my colleagues and competitors to take care and be very cautious. We also attempted to create a dialogue among companies. We are all working in the same sector but each one has different values and ethics. So, we suggested, and we will create, groups composed of the president of a municipality, three or four billboard companies, the local association of traders, a representative from the ad agencies and a representative of the ministry for the interior. Our industry objective now is to reduce the number of billboards by 25% in crowded areas. We will start this with the municipality of Antelias. The president there said he would like to be the first one to try this.

Q: Where, from within the industry, have most of the problems with visuals come from?

A: The problem comes from a lot of small agencies – they don’t care, they [produce] vulgar creations and post it everywhere. This is what disturbed and created this problem from all the religious authorities. Now, I would defend to hell pure creativity and the body of a woman on a billboard, if it is done with class, with creativity by a big agency, for a big brand with class. I do not want to be associated with a cheap product, cheap creativity and a vulgar thing.

Q: Some tiles have been taken out of less vulgar billboard visuals though, like one example along the highway to Sidon where Haifa Wehbe’s shoulders were removed.

A: This I am not aware of. A shoulder would never be a problem. Look billboard posters have abused the usage of their billboards, putting images that hurt the feelings of certain people. But if I have a big brand like Aïshti, who wants to put a half naked woman or L’Oreal, I will do it, but I won’t put it in a sensitive area. I would put it in Jounieh for example.

Q: Pikasso has never had a problem with its 3,000 plus billboards?

A: No, thank God. I just had two unipoles for a brand of underwear. I asked them to change the visual and they refused so I stopped the contract. It is not worth it. We want to be responsible. We don’t want to be used by some product or agency in order to sell some products with those provocative visuals.

Q: Has Pikasso ever had to bend the rules in order to compete in the market?

A: We respect the law as much as we can and we only stop respecting the law when our survival is at stake in a city or town. What does this mean? That we would exclude ourselves if we tell a president of a certain municipality, look we don’t install here because it does not respect the law [regarding the spacing of billboards]? Sometimes, I have no choice, or I would exclude the company from the market. If I am in a city where I have installed some billboards and then the council decides to give a competitor space at 50 meters away from me, what should I do? Dismount the billboard and exclude Pikasso from the city?

Q: Since the main advertising law stipulates that billboards should be kept 100 meters apart in all public areas, considering that 60% of the country’s 10,000 billboards are concentrated between Khaldeh and Jounieh, a stretch that only accounts for 10% of the country’s total area, won’t a 25% reduction significantly hurt revenues in these overcrowded, but profitable locations?

A: With the clutter prices are going down. Now, after the industry changes, it will be even better. It will make billboards more attractive and the sector more organized.

Q: Does Pikasso hold any of the billboards where the visual is repeated over and over again ad naseum?

A: No. I think this is not very smart, although there is a saying in Arabic: “Repetition is a good lesson for donkeys.” They believe that, but it is totally wrong.

Q: What’s to say that your 40 or so competitors will do a better job of self-regulating their visuals and, on top of this, agree to voluntarily reduce the number of billboards, especially if some are already apparently willing to push the borders of the industry.

A: Now, I think that general security will be much more rigorous on the permits they will grant and, therefore, you will see that we have less and less of those problematic visuals. I think that our competitors understand that we are all seriously under threat and that we are playing with fire.

Q: According to one published report, Jounieh recently estimated that it should be generating as much as $666,000 per year from taxes on billboards. But, last year, it only saw $26,000 (LL39 million). What accounts for this discrepancy?

A: I will tell you that the figure is wrong in Jounieh. We alone pay the amount of LL40 million annually. I have a colleague who pays LL40 million. I said to myself maybe this is for political reasons, they are attacking the old municipal council. What I have heard though is that a lot of companies have not paid their taxes elsewhere and what I think we should do is haul them in front of the courts and not let them get away with that. We at Pikasso pay rigorously all of our municipal taxes, even during the war, and this is a point of honor for me because it is an obligation.

Q: Although general security has censorship power over billboards, why have you opposed the formation of a specialized body, such as a bureau for the verification of advertising, such as has been recently proposed?

A: In Lebanon, when you create a new authority or council, you will put people together that will argue and fight with each other. We know the people now, and we know that they are good people. We think that one control from general security is more than enough. We have the law, we have to respect the law – we have to be responsible and mature. I think that maneuvering smartly among all those things will be enough.

Last month, two shark-like super yachts sat in Solidere marina, the sun’s reflection glinting menacingly off their blacked-out windows. Inside, built-in swimming pools, jacuzzis, radar masts and other space age gadgets come as standard. But that’s what you get for $60 million, a price range that shuts out all but the biggest spenders – and it is these that Lebanon’s marina owners want to woo as an increasing number of Arab owners are looking for suitable destinations to moor their boats. “It is a growth industry. We have more marinas and more people coming from the Gulf,” said Mohamad Chehab of Chehab Marine, a yacht accessory shop in the Starco building. The local yachting sector can be divided into two segments: sailors (mainly European), who include Lebanon in an Eastern Mediterranean cruise itinerary, and Arabs, mainly from the GCC nations, seeking to permanently moor a boat in a Lebanese marina. Not surprisingly, those in the industry are most excited about business coming from this latter group of high net-worth individuals.

“I have received had ten phone calls today from Kuwaitis and Saudis interested in yachts. It’s incredible. It’s the first time in 12 years that I have noticed this demand coming from Gulf residents,” Chehab said. This could be explained by the post-9/11 effect that has seen many Arabs eschew Europe for the delights of Lebanon. Many in the sector believe it will only be a matter of time before a yacht will become the ultimate accessory of the well-heeled Arab. “Wait one year and you will be amazed. Just think of all the luxury apartments you have in downtown, many of the people who will buy these will also be interested in boats,” Chehab said.

Investors in turn are keen to get a slice of this pie and are now showing more interest in the sector. It is rumored that several big marina projects are planned in Lebanon with property developers from Dubai showing interest. “We know of three or four (marinas) that are going to be launched in the coming years. One in the south and one in Beirut, and we expect to have some up north,” said Christine Asmar, project manager with International Fairs and Promotions (IFP), the company who with its German partner, Messe Duesseldorf, organized the recent Beirut Boat Show that attracted roughly 18,000 visitors.

“We all know that this is a country where everything lends itself to the marine industry: the weather is nice for nine months a year, it’s never too windy, it’s never to rainy and it’s conveniently located in the Mediterranean,” said Asmar. Interestingly enough, despite these relatively ideal sailing conditions, there seems to be little interest in sail boats, as most Arabs buyers are interested in engine-powered boats. “In the [global] super yacht segment, 20% are owned by Arabs,” said Asmar.

Prior to the Beirut Boat Show, now in its fourth year, IFP conducted a feasibility study that pointed toward major future growth in the industry. “The market projections for marinas and other water front facilities in the whole Middle East and Lebanon would be about $20 billion, with Lebanon’s potential estimated at $1 billion,” Asmar said. Although it could be argued that any report commissioned by the expo organizers may not be entirely objective, the potential was borne out by unprecedented sales at this year’s show.

“The highest number of visitors we had was in 2001. But the spending power was greater in 2004. It’s not the quantity that is important it’s the quality. A lot of sales took place at the show this year,” she said. “We also had a bigger participation on the international level.” Asmar said she felt that Lebanon and Dubai both catered to different markets and were not really in competition with each other. “Dubai is not a rival. We had exhibitors from Dubai this year and they are the people who confirmed to us that this is a complimentary market to Dubai, it doesn’t compete in any way,” said Asmar. “The region is big and the investments so huge that we can afford to have two shows, one in Beirut one in Dubai.” Asmar added that water sports centers on the Sinai Peninsula, such as Sharm el-Sheikh, attracted a different kind of market, one more interested in diving and other activities than yachting.

There are three large-scale marinas in Lebanon, Joseph Khoury in Dbayeh, Automobile et Touring Club du Lebanon (ATCL) in Jounieh and Solidere marina, near the old St Georges hotel. ATCL, a non-profit private club and the oldest marina in Lebanon is almost always full, said director Nabil Gemayel. Most of the club members are Lebanese but Gemayel said the club often attracts Europeans coming from other Eastern Mediterranean destinations. “We receive every year around 40 or 50 yachts from Cyprus, Turkey and Greece,” he said.

The Joseph Khoury marina in Dbayeh opened five years ago and is arguably the biggest marina in the Middle East, with 700 berths and 200 staff. Manager Joe Bassoul said the occupancy rate was around 30%, but he believes business will improve as the marina – the newest in Lebanon – becomes more established. “It needs time before you can improve the situation,” said Bassoul, who added that the boats in his marina ranged from small size yachts to bigger boats, with usually around 15 luxury yachts moored in the facility.

Imad Dana, manager of the new Solidere marina, said that 95% of the members are Lebanese. The marina boasts around 150 boats in the 250 berth marina and Dana said he expected to see an increase in interest. The Solidere marina employs around 40 people, but Dana added that many of the bigger yachts have their own crews, some with as many as 20. Fueling the new interest in boating are two yachting events in the country: ATCL recently hosted the Emir Rally, a boat race across the Mediterranean, and Solidere marina will be the starting point for the La Route d’Elissa boat race that involves 10 sail boats with all female-crews racing from Lebanon to Tunisia. However, despite this new bubble of optimism, Lebanon still cannot compete with yachting hubs in Turkey, Cyprus and Greece where easy air access, cheaper mooring prices and stable politics attract European yacht owners. The key to Beirut’s attraction is that it is the genuine destination for Arabs to come and play on their boats. Although Dubai has some of the biggest sea-front developments in the world, such as the massive Palm Island project, many in the Middle East and Gulf are more interested in mooring their boats permanently in Lebanon, where the lifestyle is more in keeping with the yacht-owning culture.

“It’s very hot in the Gulf so they never use their boats and there are no destinations. In Lebanon, we have created summer resorts all over the coast,” said Chehab, who was at pains to mention that it wasn’t only the Gulf owners who were buying and mooring boats in Lebanon. “You have a lot of Lebanese emigrants coming from abroad and buying boats here,” said Chehab, while Alain Maaraoui, managing director of Sea Pros, said most of his sales were to locals. “Sales are going up, although last year was better than this year, but mostly they are Lebanese.”

Nonetheless, Lebanon could do more to attract visits from European yachters. Aside from the hazy images of war and uncertainty, Lebanon faces a major a hindrance with red tape in the customs and general security procedures, which deter foreign visitors. “It’s too much paperwork and people prefer not to go through that and just go somewhere else,” Asmar said. Moreover, bureaucracy makes it difficult for boat owners to leave their non-Lebanese registered boats here for longer than six months; this is in contrast to Turkey, where there is no time limit on mooring periods for foreign boats.

The conflict with Israel also restricts movement along the Lebanese coast. “To go through the Lebanese coast is not really permitted by the Lebanese authorities. They prefer the boat to come and stay in the marina and then people can visit the coast by car,” said Gemayel.

Cost is another factor that may put off the price-conscious European boat owner. Lebanon simply cannot compete in the Eastern Mediterranean. Average mooring prices in Lebanon are $350 per meter a year for smaller boats, with the price rising to around $600 a year for larger yachts. This is almost double the mooring charge in Turkey and Cyprus. But many in the industry say prices will drop as soon as there is more competition. “When there are more marinas the price will go down,” Asmar said.