The Federal Government says it
is currently pushing for a food safety and quality bill, that seeks a healthier
approach towards handling Nigerian foods for local consumption and exportation.
The Minister of State for Health, Dr Osagie Ehanire stated this
at a meeting of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Food Safety (IMCFS) on Thursday in Abuja.
Ehanire said that the Inter-Ministerial meeting was to help
reduce the challenges of food borne illnesses facing the country as well as to
reduce the rejection of Nigerian food products being exported.
The Minister noted that the implementation strategy was produced
with inputs from stakeholders in the public and private sectors.
Food is a very essential component to the body, but sometime
food can be hazardous to the health due to the process in which it
has been produced.
Global burden of food diseases show almost one in 10 people fall
ill every year from eating contaminated food and 420, 000 people die as a
result it.
The point of the strategy is to help reduce the challenge of
food borne illnesses facing the country as well as cut down the rejection of
Nigerian export produce.
Children under five years of age are particularly at a higher
risk, with 125 000 children dying from food borne disease yearly. Africa and
South-East Asia are the hardest hit.
He also said that food safety practices in Nigeria hold the key
to the availability of safe and suitable food.
The minister pointed out that food safety would create public
health awareness as well as related trade and economic benefits.
There is need to establish food standard in the country starting
with checking the kind of fertilizers, soil, seedlings, and chemicals used for
pest and weed control in the cultivation processes.
Hygiene is a major consideration when talking about food.”
Ehanire said that the inter-ministerial committee would ensure
the policy document presented gets Federal Executive Council’s approval for
onward pushing to the Legislature for legal backing.
On his part, the Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh expressed
worry over the unhealthy packaging of food that causes ailments and the
rejection of food products in the foreign market.
He said that the foreigners who buy our food products wanted to
know the source of the food, how it was produced and they were talking of
trace ability of our food.
For instance, what chemicals do we use to preserve them ? Are
they applied in the right quantity? These are issues the inter-ministerial
committee would be working on.
Sometimes also,our smoked fish arrive EU markets and they find
maggots in them, because we did not smoke them well.
These are issues we are addressing and once we sort all these
issues out, we would reach out to our foreign partners to improve trade.
Speaking further on rising concern of ailments and unhealthy
food consumption, Ogbe said,”one sick Nigerian is a loss to the nation’s
economy and well being.
It is always a pain seeing Nigerians on television, soliciting
for N10 million to go to India for kidney disease.
The UNIDO lead Technical Adviser, Dr Hussaini Shaukat, said that
UNIDO would assist Nigeria to develop safe foods.
When the quality is certified and the quantity is certified,
what is remaining element is safety and we are here to work on the safety
element. He said.
Shaudat noted that in the nearest future, Nigerian products
would be accepted globally.
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