Senate passes bill to regulate ‘lime’ sold in stores

The full Senate body has officially passed Senate Bill 23-54, which essentially regulates afok or bweesch—commonly known as lime—under the Pure Food and Drug Control Act.

Following a Senate session last Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed S.B. 23-54 which essentially regulates afok or bweesch—commonly known as lime—that are sold in stores.

The bill now heads to the House for a final vote.

Introduced by Sen. Corina Magofna (Ind-Saipan), the bill is intended to provide some kind of protection for consumers as well as the natural resource (corals) that are being used to prepare lime.

“At this time there’s nothing in place that requires the manufacturers or producers of lime to get the product tested to ensure that it is safe for consumers to ingest. So, I just wanted to put that protection in place. I know there is no hard evidence or studies linking lime to oral cancer (which is prevalent here in the CNMI) but I at least wanted to start the process where the afok itself is being tested to ensure that there are no foreign ingredients in there that might be harmful to the people who are consuming the product. That’s the intent of this proposed legislation,” she said.

Essentially the bill focuses on requiring labels on lime being sold to consumers that fully discloses the contents of the substance as well as its effects.

“The bill is really just to ensure that we place some standards as far as labeling where they’re being manufactured, where the companies are, I know some of the afok right now have labels that state the ingredients and what not but I want to take it a step further and get it tested,” she said.

Sen. Donald Manglona (Ind-Rota), in support of the bill, said Guam has taken extra steps to ensure lime sold in stores are properly secured and labeled so the CNMI should do the same.

“I noticed in Guam, afok is properly packaged with a sealed unlike here in the CNMI and this is the same vendor that sends to both CNMI and Guam and it’s about requiring the extra packaging and security that nothing else gets added in the process. It will provide better safety standards. I support the intent of the legislation and it just provides an extra safeguard for the consumers. This bill is an extra layer of security to ensure that no extra substances are added other that what would be included in the labeling,” he said.

Meanwhile Sen. Celina Babauta (D-Saipan) raised concerns about sanitation.

“I agree, however it would be prudent to include some kind of provision in there that the Division of Sanitation would promulgate some kind of regulations to the inspection or the product and handlers of this and also the location of where they’re processing this for sanitary reasons it would be prudent to include that in the bill. That’s just my recommendation and I hope that’s included,” she said.

The concern was addressed, and it was included in the bill.

Sen. Dennis Mendiola (R-Rota) also raised concerns about the product’s longevity and recommended that manufactured dates be included on lime products sold in store.