Published: May 22, 2026
MONROVIA — The House of Representatives has ordered the Liberia Standards Authority to appear before plenary next Tuesday to answer for what lawmakers say is a systemic failure to protect Liberians from unsafe imported products, unregulated chemicals used on food crops, and beverages entering the country without testing or proper labeling.
The summons, issued after a formal communication from Bong County District #6 Rep. Moima Briggs-Mensah, marks the latest legislative challenge to an agency that operates on a $100,000 annual budget and sits under the same Commerce Ministry that promotes the importation it is supposed to police.
“The same institution encouraging importation is supervising the authority responsible for protecting consumers,” Briggs-Mensah told colleagues during plenary discussions. “It does not show independence.”
Her communication, addressed to House Speaker Richard Nagbe Koon, called on the authority to explain why fertilizers and other imported products continue to reach Liberian markets with instructions and warnings written entirely in foreign languages — rendering them unreadable to the majority of consumers.
The accountability demand covers fiscal years 2024 through 2026 and extends beyond labeling. Briggs-Mensah requested a full record of inspections, seizures, enforcement actions, penalties and compliance monitoring activities, as well as a detailed financial breakdown accounting for every dollar appropriated to the institution, including operational funds, donor support, internally generated revenues, laboratory equipment procurement, transportation, and public awareness expenditure. She also asked for audited financial reports alongside measurable results corresponding to those appropriations.
The Bong County lawmaker tied the regulatory vacuum directly to a public health crisis she said Liberians are currently living through.
“Today our people are suffering from kidney infection, liver infection, and different sicknesses we cannot even explain,” she said. “The chemicals meant for plants and trees are now being used on vegetables, and our people are consuming them.”
She raised parallel concerns about imported and locally repackaged liquor, she said, that arrives in communities in barrels without any quality-control verification. “People are drinking these things, and we do not even know whether they have been tested,” she said.
Briggs-Mensah also cited concerns raised at an international conference she attended in Germany, where participants reportedly discussed the use of human medications by some poultry farmers to accelerate livestock growth, a practice she said may be undermining the effectiveness of certain antiretroviral therapies.
“The reason some HIV medication is not working effectively anymore is that some poultry farmers are using some of these medicines to grow chickens faster,” she claimed, though she offered no independent data to support the assertion.
The lawmaker argued that the Legislature had previously passed measures aimed at enhancing consumer protection, including the Fertilizers Regulatory Bill and reforms to the standards authority’s operating framework, but dangerous and unregulated products still continue to enter the market.
“The safety, health, and economic well-being of Liberian consumers, farmers, businesses, and industries depend greatly on an effective national standards and quality assurance system,” she wrote in her formal communication.
The authority’s management is now expected to appear before the full House next Tuesday.
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