Food fortification the way to go

THE Government will, with effect from July 1, enforce mandatory fortification of selected foods, a strategy announced two years ago to fight micro-nutrient deficiency in the country, especially among women and children. Food fortification is a process of adding micronutrients to food and is meant to prevent deficiency diseases such as anaemia, mental retardation and goitre. The Government is targeting to add nutrients to mealie-meal, wheat flour, sugar and cooking oil.

The Minister of Health and Child Care Dr David Parirenyatwa announced in November 2015 that the country would adopt compulsory fortification of the foods this year. He launched the Zimbabwe National Food Fortification Strategy (2014-2018), which is aligned to the National Food and Nutrition Strategy for Zimbabwe and serves as a guide at both policy and implementation levels to prevent micro-nutrient deficiencies. An enabling statutory instrument was issued a few months ago.

The strategy was developed in response to the 2012 Zimbabwe Micro-nutrient Survey that showed that 19 percent of children aged 6-59 months are vitamin A deficient, while 72 percent have iron deficiency, and 31 percent are anaemic, and nearly 1,5 million working age adults with anaemia suffer deficits in work performance.

Vitamin A deficiency in children under the age of five increases the risk of a child’s death before their fifth birthday, while anaemia due to iron deficiency among pregnant women contributed to high rates of prematurity, low birth weight and infant mortality. Zimbabweans no longer have a problem of goitre, the swelling of the neck resulting from enlargement of the thyroid gland since the Government introduced iodised salt.

The health implications caused by a business as usual approach towards the food that the people eat are ghastly to contemplate. The fortification strategy is therefore a plausible step that should promote the health of the people - the resourcepoor, women and children under five years of age, especially those resident in rural areas.

Already 10 big local food processing companies have complied or have indicated their willingness to do so. They are National Foods, Grain Marketing Board, Mega Foods, Tongaat Hulett, Blue Ribbon, Parrogate, Gutsamhuri, UniFoods, starafricacorporation and Zim Source Foods.

The firms must be commended for doing the right thing. It is good for their business, it is good for their public images. It shows they don’t pursue profit and profit alone, but are also socially responsible, cognisant of the obvious adverse impacts their products have on the people who consume them.

While the 10 companies have complied, the Grain Millers’ Association of Zimbabwe (GMAZ) is putting pressure on the Government to suspend food fortification.

“If this mandatory fortification programme is enforced as from July 1, 2017, as being threatened, we will see many millers unable to continue production especially our small-scale black indigenous grain millers. The economic challenges of the past 10 years have seen the country’s operating black maize millers dwindling to 23 in May 2017 from 128 in 2009; the country’s operating wheat black millers have fallen to one in May 2017 from five in 2009. Mandatory fortification cannot and must not be allowed to come and finish them off,” GMAZ chairman, Mr Tafadzwa Musarara said recently at a Command Agriculture review workshop in Harare.

His organisation has also written a letter to the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare pleading for the exercise to be postponed. Dr Parirenyatwa has rejected their proposal, insisting yesterday that the cost for compliance was negligible.

This week, the association wrote to the Minister of Industry and Commerce, Dr Mike Bimha raising the same issues.

Mr Musarara, in his letter to Dr Bimha raises the cost issue, which we think makes sense. Twenty million dollars is a huge sum of money that he said members of his organisation will cumulatively incur in equipping themselves and the $7 million monthly bill for importation of fortificants is a substantial sum of money too.

We are confident the Government is seized with these matters and will, in consultation with the millers, find a way to go round the cost implications. We remember that in November 2015, the millers asked the Government to consider reducing or totally removing import duty on the fortificants. We have no doubt that the Government will listen to them on this.

We note the millers’ argument, but there are food processors that are already compliant. Tongaat Hulett announced on Sunday that it was already selling white and brown sugar that is fortified with vitamin A. Starafricacorporation who manufacture white sugar has also made a similar announcement.

Could it be that the cost implications for fortification are less on sugar, but higher on maize, wheat and other grains? We are unsure. The Government is urged to establish the full cost structures for all foods for which micro-nutrients would be added and see if GMAZ can be trusted.

The point to be made in the final analysis is that the drive towards food fortification must not be slowed down or halted. It, as they say, is what the doctor ordered. People’s health and welfare are more important than profit.