The story of the Moroccan watermelon, which has become a trend on social media

 

Watermelon is a summer fruit that Moroccans love

Watermelon in Morocco has turned into a trend in the past hours, so what is the story?

It all started when the ONSSA  (Plant Products Control Service) of the Agadir Regional Directorate of the Office of Health Safety directed a correspondent in French! To the director of one of the major super commercial markets in Agadir, asking him to stop marketing the red watermelon because the shipment contained chemicals unfit for human consumption.

According to the correspondence issued by the head of the plant products department at the Regional Directorate of the National Office for Health Safety of Food Products in the Souss-Massa region, the samples taken from the aforementioned market showed on August 1, 2023, that watermelon contains chemicals that are not suitable for human consumption.

The document indicated that the analysis of the samples taken showed the presence of active ingredients that were not approved in Morocco, and it was related to the substances “flutamide” and “triadimenol”, which were present in the watermelon shipment. and provide the ability to track the shipment and the quantities still in stock.

Content creators in Morocco captured this correspondence and turned it into videos that swept the digital platforms that produce videos, especially YouTube and TikTok, bringing the price of watermelon down from 5.95 dirhams per kilogram in supermarkets to 3.95 dirhams today, Monday 14 August.

The authorities were able to track the shipment of Agadir supermarket, only to discover that it was coming from an area in the west of Morocco near the city of Kenitra called Al-Awamra, but they did not reveal the number of citizens who had consumed the previous shipments containing toxic substances, and the fate of the previous shipments before the date of August 1 remained unknown until now.

In Morocco, watermelon is considered one of the summer fruits that are very popular with consumers, but this incident would cause people to stop buying for a while.

The story of the poisoned red watermelon entered the Moroccan parliament asking some deputies questions about the government and asking the Minister of Agriculture to disclose the measures taken by the ministry to find out the truth about the content of the aforementioned correspondence and the measures that will be taken to protect the consumer from these behaviors that violate the law, calling in the same context to Disclosure of the actions and measures that the government will take to avoid the recurrence of such acts.

One of the controversial issues in the matter of watermelon is the correspondence of the Office of Health Safety to the store manager in French, which is used locally in the economy, and was discussed on the Internet.