Foot in mouth disease

Peanut butter: "dairy" goodness

Did you know that peanut butter was classified as dairy? Me neither.

Let me give you some context: There are three major retailers in Madagascar where one can do one's food shopping - Jumbo and Leader Price, which stock primarily French products, and Shoprite, which stocks mainly South African stuff. It is much cheaper than the other two, is just down the road from where I live and I visit it almost daily. 

The second part of our context-setting involves an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in a far-flung corner of Limpopo province in South Africa in October last year. It was caught quickly and didn't extend beyond one farm (which has since been declared free of the disease). Unfortunately, we the consumers, along with Shoprite, were affected by it ... in faraway Madagascar. 

Firstly, shortly after the outbreak, one of our favourite retailer's containers arrived in port here, containing a variety of products, including butter. It was promptly turned back to South Africa. They weren't allowed to unpack anything for fear that other products had been contaminated by the supposedly-infected butter. And so we started noticing shortages on their shelves. 

But the funniest incident occurred more recently:

In order to prevent similar problems the suppliers despatched a new container from SA, and this time made sure there was no dairy in it. But when it arrived at this end of the short voyage the customs officials once again rejected it. Why? Because it had peanut butter in it. And there was no persuading them that peanut butter was made from peanuts and contained no dairy. The ingredients mentioned no dairy but it had the word "butter" plastered on the side, which was enough for them! And so, once again, off went the whole container-load of products back to South Africa and the shelves get emptier and emptier...

It would be hilarious but for the fact that all imported goods, including dairy products, have become so much more expensive to obtain in this impoverished nation. My milk comes from Egypt, cheese from South America, the butter is from France or New Zealand and much of the yoghurt comes from Mauritius... I heard today that the government is starting to import sugar and rice. I just pray, for the people's sake, that there's no peanut butter in the same container...