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{
"id": 1353028,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1353028/?format=api",
"text_counter": 244,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Sen. Cheruiyot",
"speaker_title": "The Senate Majority Leader",
"speaker": {
"id": 13165,
"legal_name": "Aaron Kipkirui Cheruiyot",
"slug": "aaron-cheruiyot"
},
"content": " Madam Temporary Speaker, I keep forgetting, but I will I will get it right along the way. Thank you for reminding me. If I make the same mistake, remind me once more until I get it right. This Bill addresses an important need in our society; the need to ensure that whatever Kenyans are eating is actually certified and passes the test of what good food should encompass. Many times, Kenyans ask us, why is it that in the past many people would live to be 80, 90, 100 years yet nowadays, to get people to live past the good age of 80 years is something extremely difficult. There are diseases that are coming up so frequently and being reported, cancer being just one of them. People are beginning to question is it something to do with our feeding habits? Therefore, such an important Bill that sets into place the exercise of coordinating all these food and feed safety authorities, because the Bill speaks to an authority or a body called competent authority and it is defined in the prerequisite pages of the Bill, what a competent authority is. That, a competent authority means the public institutions responsible for official controls set out in the First Schedule or such other public entity as the Cabinet Secretary, may, by order of gazette, determine. In the closing parts of the Bill, such institutions, that at least presently exist, like the Dairy Board and Fertilizer, are extremely important public institutions, which in the absence of a body or an office that coordinates all the activities. It is easy for a lot of the things to fall through the racks, and nobody to actually keenly check and see what is it that is being done by these agencies that is not in sync with what the Government or what an administration is supposed to do. In fact, I have problems with this Bill in its architecture, though I agree largely with the fact that there is need for an overall coordinating body for all these competent authorities that look into the safety of what Kenyans are eating. It is my strong suggestion and perhaps after we have set up this office, we would wish to compare with other jurisdictions. By watching and practice, I know that in other jurisdictions, these institutions, together with those of drugs, because you cannot separate actually, because it is what human beings consume. That is why you will find that I do not know which particular jurisdiction I can cite off the top of my mind, but I know that Food and Drug Authority, for example, in the USA, they are all coordinated under one roof so that you have various departments that handle, as opposed to this silo mentality that I continue to see. In fact, this Bill solves part of the problem, but it still further creates a problem that I see with Government of Kenya and how it is organized. This silo mentality of ensuring that you only have one institution looking out for a particular aspect. You could argue either way because others have presented an argument that, what if you have structural failure in that particular institution to the sense that the person leading it, and you have rested the authority of that particular institution in one hand, let us say, in the person of the Director-General."
}