FAL Rises From Dormancy -From One Room to National Watchdog

MONROVIA – For six years, the law creating the Food Authority of Liberia sat on paper while unsafe goods moved freely. Director General Precellia Cherue has spent 18 months turning that paper into an institution. Her record includes burned tomato mix, a coordination committee and a five-year strategic plan. Partners from Brussels to Tokyo have lined up behind her. The harder question is whether the woman buying fish and pepper at Rally Time Market is safer today. A national assessment found most food businesses unaware of basic regulations. A US$11.3 million (L$2.06 billion) financing gap also stands between plan and practice. The foundation is laid, but the walls are still going up, as THE ANALYST reports.

The Food Authority of Liberia (FAL), long dormant despite a clear legal mandate, has grown into an active food-safety regulator in the 18 months since Director General Precellia Cherue took office. Appointed by President Joseph Nyuma Boakai in March 2025, Cherue inherited an institution that existed largely on paper.

When she arrived, FAL had no coordinated inspection regime, no meaningful laboratory capacity, no national enforcement structure and no visible presence in the daily work of protecting Liberians from unsafe food. Today, the Authority presents itself as a science-driven regulator that seizes unsafe products, develops commodity-specific standards and coordinates a once-fragmented system.

“Under Cherue’s leadership, the Food Authority of Liberia has grown from a dormant institution to a credible, science-driven and increasingly visible regulator,” a statement from the institution said. It added that FAL is now profiling food commodity-specific standards to be turned into regulations and is earning the confidence of international partners.

A Law That Slept

The Food Authority of Liberia was established by the Food and Feed Quality and Safety Act of 2019, which designated it the competent authority responsible for food safety and quality across the entire food and feed supply chain. For years, however, the Authority remained largely inactive.

Food safety was instead handled by several institutions, including the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Public Health Institute of Liberia, the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Agriculture. Each played a role, but they often worked in parallel rather than together.

The result was fragmented oversight, unaccounted inspection data, weak surveillance, limited enforcement capacity and a public largely unaware of the risks in its own markets. A national assessment later found that 73 percent of food businesses surveyed were unaware of relevant food-safety regulations, while 78 percent did not follow formal standards in running their businesses.

From One Room To Ten

The Authority ceased to be a legal fiction when the government appointed its first Board of Directors and executive team, with Cherue as Director General. One of her first practical changes was physical: she moved the Authority from a single-room office at the Ministry of Health to ten offices in the former maternity center at the old Ministry of Health compound on the Capitol Bypass.

In June 2025, FAL held its first World Food Safety Day celebration. Speaking at that event, Cherue said the establishment and operationalization of the Authority in 2025 marked a strategic shift for Liberia toward evidence-based food safety practices.

In July 2025, she convened a national stakeholder consultative meeting on food safety governance, bringing together government ministries and agencies, the private sector and civil society. “The meeting marks a critical step forward in our shared responsibility to safeguard the health and wellbeing of citizens through an effective, transparent and collaborative food governance system,” she told participants.

The meeting launched a deliberate effort to clarify mandates, align institutions and build the operational structure the Authority had never had. FAL subsequently announced it would prepare a five-year strategic plan and launch a national awareness campaign to educate citizens on its work.

Securing Legal Muscle

In October 2025, Cherue led a delegation to the Ministry of Justice to formalize the Authority’s enforcement role, citing Part II, Section Two of the 2019 Act. She secured recognition of FAL as the authoritative body for food safety in the country, and the two institutions agreed to form a partnership to improve coordination and legal enforcement.

In November 2025, FAL held a review of its draft strategic plan covering 2026–2030, engaging stakeholders from the food and agricultural sector as well as consumers to identify gaps. By January 2026, the Authority was translating newly issued cold-chain standards from the Liberia Standards Authority into enforceable monitoring tools.

“We will use these standards to monitor, enforce and evoke compliance of all importers, distributors and retailers and the general market,” Cherue said at the time. “This is intended to ensure that what comes from the market to our plate are safe and healthy for consumers.”

First Major Enforcement Action

The same month, FAL carried out its first major public enforcement action: the disposal and burning of 190,000 packs of Ghanaian-made Tasty Tom Tomato Mix that its laboratory tests had found unsafe. The action marked the Authority’s arrival as a regulator willing to take goods off the shelves.

“Our laboratory tests showed that these products did not meet Liberia’s food safety standards and pose risk to the public,” Cherue said. “We also want the public to know that we only act when we have evidence. All our decisions are based on science and the law. Liberia will not compromise on food safety.”

A National Coordination Committee

In April 2026, Liberia formally launched the Liberian Food Safety Coordination Committee, a national platform bringing government institutions, private-sector actors, development partners and civil society under one structure. Supporters of the Authority regard the launch as the most significant achievement of Cherue’s tenure so far.

Cherue was elected Chairperson of the committee, with Fatima Conneh-Farah of the private sector as Co-Chair. The committee’s mandate includes improving regulatory coherence, enhancing accountability and transparency, strengthening collaboration and ending the duplication and overlap that had long weakened food safety governance.

“Food safety is not just a technical issue — it is about protecting our people, strengthening our food systems, and supporting national development,” Cherue said at the launch. The remark set the tone for the Authority’s public messaging in the months that followed.

Strategic Plan And National Assessment

In August 2026, FAL launched its 2026–2030 Strategic Plan under the theme, “Strengthening Food Safety and Food Security for National Development.” The plan, developed with support from the European Union-funded Liberian Food Safety Initiative and implemented by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), sets out a roadmap covering stronger regulation, risk-based inspections, improved laboratory capacity, digital registration and traceability, public education and greater institutional coordination.

The launch also saw the release of the National Food Safety Assessment, a study that exposed the scale of the challenge. Cherue presented the findings as a call to action, describing the plan as a national framework for building a modern, science-based, risk-informed and consumer-centered food-control system rather than a mere institutional roadmap.

She said the Authority’s success should be measured not by the number of inspections conducted but by “healthier children, safer markets, more confident consumers, responsible food businesses, prosperous farmers, competitive industries and expanded trade.” At the World Food Safety Day celebration in June 2026, she had outlined priorities including stronger laboratory capacity, improved national surveillance and evidence-based policies and regulatory reforms.

Partners At Home And Abroad

Recognizing that Liberia cannot build a modern food safety system alone, Cherue and her team have engaged global platforms including the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Health Organization (WHO), UNIDO and the International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN). The aim, according to the Authority, is to align Liberia with international best practice.

The Authority has also welcomed support from the European Union, which funded the national assessment and strategic plan, and from UNIDO and the State of Israel, which launched a two-year initiative to strengthen FAL’s institutional capacity. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has also become a partner in Liberia’s food safety modernization.

JICA’s support is expected to focus on technical cooperation, capacity-building and knowledge exchange, including strengthening FAL’s laboratory diagnostics, risk-based inspection systems and human resource development. The partnership reflects Japan’s broader commitment to helping Liberia build resilient food systems and protect public health.

UNIDO Director General Gerd Müller praised the partnership, saying it was helping Liberia “build a modern and effective regulatory framework that protects consumers, enhances trade competitiveness, and enables Liberian products to access regional and global markets.” Israel’s Ambassador David Roet called Liberia “one of Israel’s closest friends in Africa” and expressed pride in supporting the Authority’s institutional capacity.

Leadership And Team

Those who work with Cherue point less to the list of achievements than to the consistency of her message. She has repeatedly insisted that enforcement is about protection rather than punishment, and that decisions must rest on science and the law rather than convenience or pressure.

She leads a management team that includes Deputy Directors General Georgette Gray and Theophilus Ndorbor. Partners have described FAL as one of Liberia’s newest and most promising government agencies.

The Road Ahead

Eighteen months after Cherue’s appointment, FAL now has a strategic plan, a coordination committee, enforcement capacity, laboratory partnerships and ten offices where it once had one room. Its Director General has become one of the most visible voices in Liberia’s food safety conversation.

Significant challenges remain. The Authority faces a US$11.3 million financing gap to fully implement its five-year plan, while informal markets, heavy dependence on imported food and weak cold-chain infrastructure continue to pose serious risks.

For the market woman selling smoked fish in the open sun and the mother buying canned tomato for the family pot, the Authority’s work will be measured by what reaches their tables. Cherue’s supporters argue that the foundation has been laid and the leadership is in place; the coming years will test whether the structure can be completed.