What About The Food We Eat Locally?

When the General Overseer of the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), Pastor Mensa Otabil preached to draw attention to how food is handled at our marketing centres, that is displaying them on the ground, one expected government officials to take action but nothing happened. In fact it is not only at the marketing centres, the storage process of food in the country is not the best.

It therefore shocked me to read a Ghanaian Times report that, the Food and Drugs Authority together with the European Union (EU) have agreed to “institute a mandatory certification on palm oil exports to the EU.” This, the paper said was an initiative to ensure the safety of such products in order to boost Ghana’s image on quality and safety on the international market.

Good news that we want to boost our foreign exchange earnings! But what about what we eat locally? Some experts in the food industry put it bluntly that we are eating poison daily because of the way food is handled from the farmgate to the market. It is therefore a pity that very basic controls on food from the farms to the markets have been ignored. As a result, perhaps many people are dying daily simply because of what they eat in order to live.

In fact, food, a basic necessity should not send us to our grave. It must keep us alive but as a country we have refused to take the necessary steps. The irony of the situation is that, foreign companies operating in the food industry in the country are expected comply with best practices, sadly there no such regulations on what majority of the people consume.

As a result, mycotoxins, which are toxic fungal secondary metabolites that cause diseases—called mycotoxicoses—in humans and animals are not being controlled in the country. Of the numerous toxic metabolites, the best known belong to the family of aflatoxins.

Writing in the Medical Laboratory Sciences, G Blunden and others, said the presence of mycotoxins in a wide range of foodstuffs can lead to many different toxic conditions in both man and domestic animals. They noted that the major fungi responsible for producing these toxins are species of Aspergillus, Penicillium, Fusarium and Alternaria, although other genera such as Claviceps, Diplodia and Arthrinium are involved as well.

Bluden and his colleagues said major mycotoxins are responsible for illnesses following ingestion of contaminated foods, with particular emphasis on the effects produced in humans. Officials of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) say there is no serious policy guideline, apart from the Public Health Act, which regulates food supply in the country. This in itself is not enough because mycotoxins are not even known to some of the farmers and so they do not know what to do to prevent it in the food chain.

What we have now is that the Ministry of Agriculture looks at production and yields, but that is not all there is in food production. What is being produced must be monitored to ensure that before it reaches the table, it is safe. The FDA officials said, mycotoxins start from the planting level through to the harvesting and storage stages. This means that there is the need to check it.

The effects of some food-borne mycotoxins are acute, symptoms of severe illness appearing very quickly. Other mycotoxins occurring in food have longer term chronic or cumulative effects on health, including the induction of cancers and immune deficiency. Researchers on the subject say information about food-borne mycotoxins is far from complete, but enough is known to identify them as a serious factor in many parts of the world, causing significant economic losses.

The food-borne mycotoxins likely to be of greatest significance for human health in tropical developing countries are the fumonisins and aflatoxins. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says Fumonisins were discovered as recently as 1988 so there is little information on their toxicology. To date, there is sufficient evidence in experimental animals for the carcinogenicity of cultures of Fusarium moniliforme that contain significant amounts of fumonisins; and there is limited evidence in experimental animals for the carcinogenicity of fumonisin B1.

The FAO said, to reduce or prevent production of most mycotoxins, drying should take place soon after harvest and as rapidly as feasible. “The critical water content for safe storage corresponds to a water activity (aw) of about 0.7. Maintenance of foods below 0.7 aw is an effective technique used throughout the world for controlling fungal spoilage and mycotoxin production in foods,” it added.

Damaged grain, the FAO said, is more prone to fungal invasion and therefore mycotoxin contamination. It is thus important to avoid damage before and during drying, and in storage. Drying of maize on the cob, before shelling, is a very good practice.

Fatih Ermis, Head of Agricultural Services of Nestlé said, Mycotoxins are poisonous chemical compounds produced by certain fungi. “There are many such compounds, but only a few of them are regularly found in food and animal feedstuffs such as grains and seeds. Nevertheless, those that do occur in food have great significance in the health of humans and livestock,” he added.

For this reason, Nestlé follows the same policy in Ghana as in Europe to procure agricultural produce for the company’s operation to avoid buying contaminated maize. This is how the company protecting those who consumed their products. On the other hand, the country is doing nothing to protect the ordinary citizens who depends on food from the farms to the marketing centres.

In Nigeria for instance, Nestlé signed a partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) and Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA)last year, to help address the issue of crop contamination prevalent in the cultivation of maize.

In a statement, the members of the partnership said, all the organizations involved will work together to build the capacity of farmers and small agricultural businesses in Kaduna State by leveraging the expertise of volunteers. “Farmers will learn how to reduce crop contaminants, to help sustainably increase the safety and quality of maize and soybeans, which will lead to improve the health, nutrition and livelihoods in their communities,” it added.

The statement said, over a three year period, a team of experts and 150 volunteers led by CNFA will design and deliver farmer and aggregator training programs to help reduce aflatoxins and other contaminants in grains, through a train-the-trainer approach. Ghana needs something like this.

All these efforts mean that mycotoxins, of which aflatoxins is a part, have become a problem. One review published by researchgate.net states that, foodborne aflatoxin exposure, especially through maize and groundnuts, is common in much of Africa and Asia--areas where childhood stunting and underweight are also common, due to a variety of possibly interacting factors such as enteric diseases, socioeconomic status, and suboptimal nutrition.

The Partnership for Aflatoxins Control in Africa (PACA) says it is suspected that “a relationship exists between aflatoxins and stunting,” even though it said, “only a small number of observational studies

have been conducted, but these initial studies have found a strong association between aflatoxin exposure and growth retardation.”

Our scientists know that what we are eating is killing us. The FDA is aware of the mycotoxins in our food but there is no national policy. What we have now on our books is an archaic law on food safety. The Ministry of Agriculture is simply concerned about production and does not show any concern on how food is stored properly. Therefore, we have opened ourselves to all forms of dangers simply by eating in order to live, but in reality we are sending ourselves to the grave.