Snapshot from video by Al-Alkilans and Sultanji about the quality of honey in the market, posted on May 28 by Yasser Shalaby on Facebook
A thumbnail shows content creators Al-Alkilans and Sultanji standing at a kitchen counter top, wearing matching tee-shirts displaying a cartoon bee, a honeycomb and, to the right, a few cubes piled in front of a sack emblazoned with the word “sugar.”
During the video, which has since garnered hundreds of thousands of views and generated a number of spin-offs, the duo deliver a story similar to the one spelled out in iconography on their t-shirts. In conversational tones, swapping honey recommendations and preferences, they tell their audience they are about to reveal the true quality of popular honey brands.
They have sent various samples to Health Ministry laboratories for testing, they say, and they will now show you the results — demonstrating whether the product has ever even “come across a bee,” whether those bees were fed on sugared water or the rich plant nectar that makes the tastiest and the healthiest honey, and whether the product is impure; mixed with added cane or artificial sugars.
Spoiler alert: all of the honey brands tested came back contaminated.
A scandal! Even the expensive brands are low quality. The popular brand names are “anonymized” by the use of barely concealed alternatives: Insigam, for example, instead of the well-known health foods brand, Imtinan; Beblawy for Al-Nahlawy. But the two content creators end the video joking about how they expect retaliation for their market-busting discovery, saying this might be their last ever broadcast.
Imtinan is yet to launch its counter campaign against Al-Alkilans and Sultanji. But when the pair published a video last month conducting a similar set of tests on popular water brands such as Nestle and Evian (disguised as Basile and Sofian) it was state authorities who intervened to arrest and investigate the pair, later releasing them on a LE50,000 bail on what “legal sources” told state-aligned outlets were charges of spreading false news. Their pages on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok have all been shut down since.
In light of the escalation against the content creators, we looked into how oversight for food and drink product safety works, the issues hampering its effectiveness, and authorities’ growing concern about claims published in the unregulated space of social media.
Fear around food and drink quality
Videos created by Al-Alkilans and Sultanji — whose pages had more than one million followers — finding fault in honey, bottled water, as well as other popular goods like brown bread, olive oil and luncheon meat, have sparked horror among social media users expressing fear about the quality of products on the market.
State agencies have leapt in to reassure consumers that they are fastidious in ensuring routine analyses are conducted on consumable goods, reasserting that they are firmly in control of standards on the market and picking holes in the results obtained by the content creators.
After the bottled water video caused a splash, the Health Ministry affirmed its confidence in the accuracy of its analysis and constant licensing process for food products, as well as the precision of its laboratories.
A Health Ministry official told Mada Masr that the ministry exercises strict control over food quality standards, including bottled water, and that samples are taken for analysis regularly. The official, who requested anonymity, explains that samples from the water bottles sold on the street are anonymized for analysis at ministry laboratories to ensure impartiality, and that water companies must submit samples for analysis at ministry labs before they are licensed to sell in Egypt.
The official pointed to a prior incident in 2016, when the Health Ministry’s Beheira Governorate directorate announced that bottled water being sold by Nestlé, Baraka and Aquafina was “unfit for human consumption and did not meet standard specifications” after tests revealed the presence of live bacteria and algae in their bottles.
Non-compliant batches announced at that time were withdrawn from the market and destroyed, and the companies were issued official warnings regarding the matter.
The official explains that the Beheira Governorate’s 2016 decision concerned specific, “non-compliant batches,” stressing that this does not mean all products from the same companies are or were non-compliant.
The Health Ministry is continuously conducting the same process, the source says, taking samples for testing and announcing any non-compliant results, as is the case with tap water and other goods.
Authorities have also questioned the validity of the test results the content creators obtained. Al-Akilans and Sultanji explain in their videos that they have taken samples from each brand’s version of the product and submitted them to Health Ministry laboratories, showing the official documents to their viewers.
After the video’s publication, the ministry said that the content creators’ samples could have been contaminated in the process of their transfer to Health Ministry labs. The Cabinet said the same earlier this year in relation to the honey tests, stating that there was no information about how the content creators had transferred their samples to the labs for testing and arguing that the samples could have been contaminated in the process.
Members of the public have the right to request analysis, the Health Ministry spokesperson acknowledged. But they cautioned that in such cases “the results are representative only of the sample submitted for analysis, and are not authorized for [public] distribution.”
Are food testing procedures up to standard?
Although the official processes are in place, when Mada Masr asked health inspectors about the competency and comprehensiveness of food inspection standards across the country, many pointed to long-standing concerns about the effectiveness of the authorities in Egypt.
The National Food Safety Authority was legally mandated as the body primarily responsible for food safety in 2017. It sets binding food safety regulations, issues licenses for the distribution of various types of food and monitors their quality.
But several government agencies also retain a role in food safety inspections, including the health, agriculture, supply and trade and industry ministries, as well as the General Authority for Veterinary Services.
The situation has created confusion over respective responsibilities and competencies, according to the inspectors with whom Mada Masr spoke.
Food quality and safety consultant Ahmed Hussein says that the 2017 law should have abolished all these disparate entities, or brought them under the NFSA’s management.
Instead, he explains to Mada Masr, the NFSA has no more than 300 employees and only a meager budget, while all the other inspection agencies still operate amid confusion over respective responsibilities.
Hussein and two veterinary officials also express concern about the qualifications of the few inspectors who are employed by the NFSA. The body sometimes appoints people without experience in relevant fields, says Hussein, adding that in his opinion, the agency does not rely sufficiently on Health Ministry inspectors or veterinarians, despite the crucial role played by the latter especially in monitoring food of animal origin.
Shereen Ali Zaki, head of the Food Safety Committee at the Veterinary Syndicate and a member of the syndicate’s board, also says that many of the NFSA’s employees are not qualified to conduct food safety inspections, expressing consternation that the NFSA hasn’t employed or appointed more veterinarians or health inspectors. If the NFSA used veterinarians to inspect food of animal origin, “its role would have been much more effective,” she says to Mada Masr, noting that only 100 veterinarians were working in food inspection in 2021, “meaning one veterinarian for every million citizens.”
Instead, Zaki notes that the NFSA has employed inspectors from fields like pharmacy and taken what she called the “illogical” step of putting them to work in areas falling within the expertise of Veterinarians Syndicate inspectors.
Hussein adds that conflicts of interest also impact the integrity of many NFSA inspectors, with many picking up extra work by providing consultancy services for food factories. He complained that “factory owners are warned of surprise visits, inspectors alter reports to suit owners’ wishes, and factories themselves don’t adhere to standards, because the inspector works for both the factory and the NFSA.”
Mohamed Afify Seif, former Secretary-General of the Veterinarians Syndicate, also pointed to staffing issues at the NFSA, stating that the agency has not made any new appointments since its establishment and relies entirely on a contract system.
Given the NFSA’s deficiencies, various other authorities continue to perform their roles as they did before 2017, without the NFSA exercising any authority, according to Afify and Hussein.
Hussein shares the story of a crisis that emerged at a food factory two months ago. The health minister told inspectors employed by the Health Ministry to intervene and monitor the factory’s food safety, he says, but the assignment sparked objections from the health inspectors, who said that the NFSA “are usurping our authority while we’re doing their job.”
Other inspection agencies have limited capacity for all this work, the inspectors say.
According to Zaki, the local Health Ministry veterinarian units which are responsible for food control have very low allocations in the general budget, and therefore make very few new appointments for veterinary doctors.
Some units have no veterinarians at all, she says, while others have only one veterinarian who handles all the tasks without sufficient resources. She recalls an incident in which, “we couldn’t find a vehicle to go out on campaigns or missions, and in case of sudden reports, we had to wait a long time without any means of transportation.”
She says the Central Agency for Organization and Administration also sent its staff to directorates, finding that the current numbers of staff are far less than the volume of work required. “We are suffering from a terrible shortage of personnel, and the single veterinarian responsible for inspection would need four years to cover the entire governorate,” she explains.
“The laws are being amended to grant [the NFSA inspectors] full law enforcement powers,” says Hussein. But in the meantime, “they have legally assumed the powers, although other entities are carrying out their duties.”
Content concerns
Given the impact of the capacity shortfall on the official agencies responsible, the content creators’ videos have highlighted a set of concerns for food safety, accountability protecting the public from unsound food and drink products and publishing about food and drink.
For Emad Mubarak, founder of the Association for the Freedom of Thought and Expression, the fact that the public concern prompted by the publication of Al-Alkilans and Sultanji’s videos led to their arrest, rather than a credible official engagement with the claims, shows an exaggerated concern on the part of authorities about “the reputation of the companies.”
Although public figures have argued that the content creators should have addressed judicial and food safety authorities directly about concerns before publishing them, “the internet isn’t the enemy here,” Mubarak wrote, arguing that the concerns the creators prompted around food and drink safety would have been better assuaged by a prompt investigation into the product standards to reassure the public as to their quality and safety.
As official agencies face capacity issues, Zaki noted that content creators have “assumed the role of regulatory bodies” and that people have “trusted them.”
For Zaki, this is a major concern, since she argues that content creators often face similar conflict of interest issues to those affecting food inspection authorities.
Last month, Al-Alkilans and Sultanji published a short video with Luxor Honey company where both men eat the company’s honey from a spoon and state that the “original” honey has received a favorable taste-test from each of ‘Monsieur Alkilans’ and ‘Monsieur Sultanji.’ Zaki also pointed to Al-Aliklans’ work on promotional material for restaurants, arguing that “it’s illogical for him to take on a different role in food monitoring and detecting contamination.”
The lack of guarantee around their methods, she continues, also means that there is no certainty around the veracity of the test results. “We don’t know how they collected the samples,” she told Mada Masr. As long as the sampling method remains “unclear,” she says, companies have “immunity to challenge it,” especially since the content creator “has no legal background in regulating oversight,” and is neither “a government regulatory body nor a specialized sampling authority.”
The situation amounts to an alarming erosion of accountability, according to Zaki. During officially sanctioned food inspections and sampling processes, she explains, “the entity we are reporting can appeal to the public prosecutor, and the prosecutor then requests a re-analysis of the sample.”
“Where were [those authorities] in all of this?,” she asks.
When the Interior Ministry announced its arrest of the two content creators, it accused them of attempting to “cast doubt on the safety and suitability of food products for consumption” to “get views” and “make money.”
The arrest is only the latest in a year which saw authorities arrest over 50 content creators on a variety of both moral and economic charges.
For Mubarak, in the case of food standards, the securitized response to publishing fails to address the more pressing concerns.
“If the warning [about deficient food standards] is true, the company should be held accountable. If the warning is false, the law exists to hold the publisher accountable,” the lawyer argues.
“But,” he concluded, “the opposite — punishing the warning before verifying the risk — clearly means that protecting the image is more important than protecting people.”
Dining and Cooking