Minister on Trevor Sayers’ video: What the hell going on?

AGRICULTURE Minister Clarence Rambharat has lamented that it has taken decades for citizens to be protected from "so-called health remedies."

"When you put on the television or Facebook and you see (herbal medicine practitioner) Trevor Sayers for example, in his latest box of marijuana video, you wonder what the hell is going on in this country. We've clearly lost our way if it’s taken us decades to use law as it exists to protect our citizens as it relates to these so-called health remedies. Life and health of our citizens it's too important for us to be playing the fool."

Sayers, who calls himself a doctor of natural medicine, has made a number of medical claims over the years including in 2014 when he claimed to have a cure for the Ebola virus or in 2017 when he advised using bug spray as a remedy for conjunctivitis (red eye). In his latest video he advised that fever grass and other bush could provide the same health benefits of marijuana.

Rambharat mentioned the herbalist during his feature address yesterday at the Food Fraud Prevention and Mitigation conference hosted by the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute (CARIRI) and the Agriculture Ministry at the Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain.

He said when talking about food it was also proper to talk about health products and things related to health.

"Food fraud is not only the business of the minister of agriculture."

He said the report of the Joint Select Committee on Food Fraud had 26 recommendations with the first being to draft a food safety policy and put it out for public comment which was being done with the support of the Health Ministry, Food and Agriculture Organisation and CARIRI. He added the Pan American Health Organisation led work in developing the draft and manuals to go with it, and the draft policy was in its final stage with work still to be done to develop standards and training manuals.