Gebresh Belay, a 48-year-old mother of four, frequents supermarkets both to buy food items and, if supermarkets agree to shelve her products, to sell small packets of spices she prepares.

On Thursday afternoon, July 20, 2013, she was visiting supermarkets in Gurdshola, off Asmara Road, with samples of her product.

"I have been doing this for a long time," she told Fortune, whilst waiting for the drizzling rain to stop, along with her teenage daughter who was accompanying her.

Whether trying to sell her items or shopping for her family, for over a decade there is one thing in particular she has noticed about small and medium-sized supermarkets.

"Their shelving arrangement is sometimes not up to standard," Gebresh said. "They shelve packed food items, like cookies and even medicine, near the window, exposed to the sun all day."

Gebresh remembers once being told by a friend employed at the city's Health Bureau that the cookies he bought from a supermarket in Kotebe, Yeka District, had worms inside.

"The expiry date was still a few months away, but it was already rotten," Gebresh told Fortune.

She would later visit her supermarket and discover that they were shelving most food items by the window. Because of her experience, Gebresh does not buy items that have less than three months to expiry, in order to make allowances for inadequate handling.

By 2012, out of the total 372 supermarkets operating in the capital, a large number were located in the Yeka and Bole districts, 167 and 141, respectively.

Unfortunately for Gebresh and consumers at large, these days fake expiry dates posted on goods whose sell-by date has long passed, make it hard to make an informed choice. A trend previously seen on baby formula, passing of expired products as fresh is now happening to juice brands, too.

Produced in the Middle East, Rani Juice, which Gebresh enjoys, is currently being sold with forged expiry dates.

Unknown suppliers have been distributing bottles of Rani, which had their original expiry date, May 2013, changed to September, according to the Ethiopian Food, Health & Medicine Administration and the Control Authority of Ethiopia.

"The 05 initially written has been changed into a 09, making the altered number appear bolder than the rest of the numbers written on the expiry date, " an official said, displaying a sample of the forged product to Fortune.

One retailer at a small kiosk got suspicious after unloading a dozen 1.5 litre Rani bottles. Noticing the bold 09, the retailer got suspicious. As he started asking questions, the suppliers fled using a minibus taxi, leading him to take the case to the Police and later the Authority.

The Authority is currently doing a round of advertisements on television and radio, warning retailers to take such products off the shelves as it will soon launch an investigation.

The Dembel Police station, which is investigating the matter, has only managed to arrest an acquaintance of the suppliers so far and the culprits are still unidentified.

"The bus had an Oromia license plate, so our investigation is following their tracks," Mekonen Tadesse,(Lt. Sgt), deputy head of the investigation department at Dembel, told Fortune.

Since the juice products do not have an exclusive supplier, it is taking time to find out whether the forged expiry dates are something that has been done locally or imported from elsewhere. The Authority has also received reports of similar incidences in the Amhara region.

Despite the televised warning, small kiosks in neighbourhoods around 22-Mazoria were selling bottles with the bold 09 engraved as the expiry date, when Fortune visited the area a week ago. These bottles sell for 65 Br, with retailers willing to go down as low as 60 Br.

With such products still at large, the management of the Authority have decided to form a committee to investigate all retail food markets in Addis Abeba, according to Theodros Girma, Food Regulatory Information Development & Dissemination expert at the Authority.

This was usually a task reserved for the regional offices of the Authoirty, according to Girma.

Gebresh, who has not heard of recent incidences with Rani, which she had been purchasing, was surprised when asked by Fortune how she plans to protect herself in the future.

"I don't know what you can do when such instances occur," she commented.

The task of supervising mainly lies with the Authority. At the Federal level, the Authority supervises importers, exporters and manufacturers of food items, drugs and medical equipments. At the regional level, city health bureaus or regional counterparts of the Authority are the ones that control retail markets.

As a relatively new organ, however, the structure for supervision has only been set up in the last two years. Previously, the Authority was known as the Drug Administration & Control Authority (DACA) and concerned itself with the supervision of medicine only.

A detailed directive for supervision was only issued a year ago, in August 2012. This directive demands that any food importer, exporter or manufacturer receives an approval certificate from the Authority before getting a business license. It also stipulates that they undergo supervision twice a year.

According to this directive, an importer must have a clean warehouse, a hired health professional and packing and refrigeration equipment for foods that require such facilities.

The Authority also bans the import of items of which two thirds of the period between production and expiry have already passed, according to Theodros. However, a shortage of manpower, both at the federal and regional levels, creates cracks in supervision. Moreover, contraband goods filter through the market, especially through Harar, 536km to the east of Addis Abeba, Somalia Regional State, and Denwale.

The licensing and supervision directorate of the federal Authority, for instance, only has eight individuals, who are not only tasked with licensing food traders, but also those dealing in medicine and health equipment. Only one of these individuals is a food expert, with the rest being environmental experts or specialists in laboratory and medical equipment.

Although there were over a 1,000 requests, only 540 importers and exporters were able to get certified during the last year.

"Most of them drop out after filling out requests," Debebe Aregaw, one of the experts at the licensing directorate, told Fortune.

The supervision directorate, which is expected to supervise these 540 importers and exporters, in addition to over 200 manufacturers, only has five people.

"We are overstretched," Debebe stated. " We need more manpower."

The regional counterpart of the Authority, on the other hand, was just established, in the middle of the current fiscal year. Though equipped with more manpower than the Addis Abeba Health Bureau, which previously conducted such supervision, it is still not adequate enough to handle the supervision of 9,320 food establishments, including bakeries, hotels, millers, oil refineries, restaurants, supermarkets and many others. This is in addition to 10,132 health related institutions, which experts would have to supervise.

With such shortfalls, there are many that sell compromised food items to consumers. Street vendors are especially suspicious, since they are difficult to supervise. Last year, for instance, through tips from customers, the Dembel Police Station shut down a Sudanese restaurant on Africa avenue. It was selling out of date products to street vendors who sell fried snacks, such as Samousas, potato fries and Pasties, according to Mekonen. Small scale manufacturers in Kolfe are also problematic, passing of inedible substances, such as clay, as ground paper.

On the other hand, the effectiveness of the Authority, which has an office at ports across the country, is being questioned by major food importers. They say that sometimes foods near their expiry date simply by sitting at customs offices for a long time.

"Sometimes, shipping irregularities and customs roadblocks create a financial burden," a supervisor from Shoa supermarket told Fortune.

Sometimes, the financial burden may lead importers to release expired goods into the market for lower prices, a supermarket attendant who wished to remain anonymous told Fortune.

Aside from expired goods, which used to be Aberash's major concern, handling is also an issue in the country. This is especially rampant in small kiosks and supermarkets, according Theodros.

Sensitive food items are normally placed haphazardly next to detergents and chemicals, according to Theodros.

"For example, iodised salt is mostly found next to a chemical in kiosks," Theodros told Fortune. "As it oxidises easily it loses all of its nutrients, making it ineffective."

With the source of the expired Rani Juice yet unknown, some customers have avoided buying juice altogether. A young lady, who asked for Pregat juice on Miceky Leyland street, on Wednesday, last week, quickly changed her mind upon seeing a blemish on the plastic bottle, even though the expiry date was still far away.

"I am not taking this," she shook her head as she returned the bottle to the shopkeeper. The caution has translated to other products too. "It is simply the best

Gebresh, however, simply shrugs her shoulders when realising that her hands are tied.

"I guess the only choice is to take as many precautions as you can and leave the rest to the Authorities," she told Fortune.