Moroccan Cafe Owners Deny Allegations of Chemical Additives in Coffee Amid Food Safety Controversy

Employees of several cafes in different cities "have disclosed information indicating that chemicals were indeed added to the coffee," revealed a professional source to Madar21 on Tuesday. This prompted a reaction from Noureddine El Harraq, president of the National Federation of Cafe and Restaurant Owners in Morocco (ANPCRM), who returned to the written question of the RNI parliamentary group to H24info. According to him, this question is a "kind of reaction" to one of the Federation’s press releases addressed to the government on "the difficult situation of cafes and restaurants".

"This deputy should normally have mentioned the main problem, namely the successive and numerous closures of cafes nationwide," El Harraq worries, also rejecting any relationship between fraudulent practices (coffee mixed with chemical substances) and the rise in coffee prices. "It is possible that these practices are the work of itinerant and informal cafes, which are not subject to any control," he believes.

The president of the federation assures that he has no information on the use of this chemical flavor by cafes, nor has he heard of it in the past, and that none of his colleagues, "or 99.99% of cafe owners," are aware of this substance. "We receive a sealed 6-kilo package. How can I know if it contained a chemical substance or not?" he wonders, adding that if this information proves to be accurate, the primary responsibility lies first and foremost with ONSSA, which should play its role as it should.