JEDDAH, 1 June — Officials from the Ministry of Commerce confiscated 368 barrels of hot sauce yesterday which had expired production dates and were not fit for human consumption from some warehouses in the city. The hot sauce barrels, weighing 77.28 tons, were to be distributed after being bottled to retail shops in the city and nearby markets. The owner of the warehouse will be prosecuted. The commercial fraud was discovered by Ahmad Maabar, a member of the anti-fraud department of the Commerce Ministry with the help of the officials of the Jeddah municipality. Workers in the warehouse bottled the old hot sauce and fixed labels with future dates on them. The product was imported from the United States two years earlier.
The punishment for the commercial fraud ranged between fine and imprisonment, said Muhammad Al-Harbi, director general of the Commerce Ministry’s Jeddah branch.
