Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member countries engaged in the coconut industry will have to adhere to an improved set of guidelines under the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality’s (CROSQ) Coconut Water Standard.
This is according to a article from the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) in Barbados, which among other things, posited that the new guidelines outline the procedures for the growing, harvesting, and packaging of the product.
CROSQ, at a meeting in Barbados, identified six areas that needed attention including food safety evaluation; recognition of testing facility compliance; chain of custody for samples; sampling regime; testing protocols, procedures and sampling; and the testing environment.
The new guidelines comes in light of concerns raised about the quality of coconut water sold by retailers across the region, as well as the results of recent independent analyses on samples, which found some issues with the water.
In January of this year, Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) refused a shipment of coconut water from Guyana on the grounds that it did not meet the requisite safety standard.
This was done even though the shipment sample passed tests conducted by the Government Analyst & Food & Drug Department (GAFDD).
The owner of the branded coconut water had said in the media that the samples from the shipment of coconut water detained in Trinidad had also been tested by the Scientific Research Council of Jamaica which found that it reached the requisite standard required by CARICOM for sale in the region.
The businessman had also said that he exported five other shipments to T&T but none of those were impounded.
