Where your foods are being poisoned
Food poisoning is a major contributor to mortality in the country. Sometimes claiming whole families. While some practices and places that contribute to food poisoning are common others are not known to many.
Many Nigerians are engaged in these practices thereby poisoning their foods and those they sell to others in the country. More and more Nigerians are also falling sick with liver and kidney problems as a result of food poisoning.
Unsafe foods put people at the risk of food borne diseases and other health hazards.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Audu Ogbeh, identified some of these practices and places while he was speaking during the first Nigerian food safety and investment forum organised by the European Union funded United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) Quality Infrastructure Project in Lagos .
He said the grinding machine which people use to grind and mill tomatoes, rice, beans and cereals among others is a major contributor.
He said the machine is made of steel and as it grinds there is friction, the metal wears causing metal poisoning. The metal poisons the raw material , cassava, tomato or whatever is being ground.
He said food grade stainless steel is the ideal machine for processing these items but they are very expensive adding that there was need for mass production of the machines to stop the grinding machines from poisoning Nigerians.
Other enumerated by the minister include: tomatoe paste reddened with chemicals, apples ripened in ethanol, parboiling rice with drums (contains high degree of metals), goats roasted with tyres and washed in gutters, spraying insecticides on fish and smoking on fire to make it look fresh, imported frozen chicken which are injected with formaldehyde (which is foods for not meant for consumption), fish frozen and defrozen, drying foods by the roadside, and aflotoxins in maize to mention a few.
Ogbeh also advised Nigerians to stop buying or drinking satchet water that has been left in the sun for hours . He said In the European Union counties people don’t use plastic bottles for water anymore but glass bottles.
The minister said some weed killers that have been banned in other countries still find their ways to Nigeria.
Speaking at the same forum, Minister of Health Prof, Isaac Adewole, said the negative impact of unsafe food is enormous and it creates a vicious cycle of disease and malnutrition, particularly affecting infants, young children, elderly and the sick.
According to John Tehinse, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) National Expert on Food Safety people should keep food safe from contamination.
He said: “We need to create awareness on chemicals that can make consumer sick , it could be chronic, or acute. When it is acute, you go to the hospital within an hour or two or a week you may be ok, but when it becomes problematic it is chronic. At this level after sometimes you may feel you are okey until after sometime the tissues may begin to dysfunction and can result to cancer or death.
“You notice that for sometimes now some of our products have not been allowed into the international community markets, that is because some of our products contain things that are far in excess or tolerable limit for example our beans, are not allowed in any EU market because it contain high level of dyclophur which is a fumigant we use to suppress beetles and weevils and because it is high level or EU brothers will not accept it because it can endanger their health, so it is banned,”he said.