The country has been awash with news of food contaminated with chemical residues that has been on sale to the unsuspecting public.
And while sugar has received more prominence, the reality is, there are dozens of other foods, including bottled water, in the market whose quality cannot be guaranteed and which are not being talked about.
Kenya has a flourishing bottled water market, with 2016 figures from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimating sales to be more than Sh12 billion per year.
Sometimes, unscrupulous vendors go as far as using bottles bearing labels of well-known companies and passing it off as genuine products.
The thriving industry seems undeterred by the sporadic enforcement that is carried out by government authorities.
According to the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA), over 70 per cent of products in the water and juice sector are illicit.
However, the Standardisation Mark (SM) for domestically produced product is not a secure, serialised mark that can be used by consumers to verify the authenticity of these product — each manufacturer is simply authorised to include the SM image in their product packaging.
Additionally, the recent scandal regarding Kebs Import Standardisation Marks (ISM) has demonstrated the limits of a marking solution that is not secure and robust.
For the implementation of such a system to work however, the KRA must work hand in glove with other relevant authorities such as Kebs, the Water Services Regulatory Board and the Water Resource Management Authority.
The ultimate goal should be ensuring that only companies bottling genuine, clean and safe mineral water are licensed and authorised to bear the secure KRA stamp.