Shy Away From Contaminated Food, EU Tells Nigeria

Nigeria has received a directive from European Union to put a management system in place to guard against exportation of pesticide contaminated food products, or confront rejection of exporting goods outside its shores.The Director General, National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Dr. Paul Orhii says the country has a deadline till June 16, 2016 to effect the necessary adjustments.Recently, the international markets aired their concern on the quality of some products exported from Nigerian market. The agency revealed that if the pesticide residues in these foods are not checked, they would put a major threat on the country’s economy; especially in Europe, US and Japan where most of these products are consumed.This, among other issues, was discussed in a briefing with the new Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), Col. Hameed Ali (rtd.) recently in Abuja.Orhii said, “This high pesticide residue could explain the increased level of cancers, kidney failures and different other diseases in the country. The agency will henceforth deploy mobile laboratories that will go from farm to farm and markets to identify at what point the contaminants get into the food products. Once we identify it, we will conduct public awareness campaign and workshops for the people growing these foods.“We also want to put a system in place so that before these products leave our shores to the international markets, the NCS can inquire and test these products to curb the incidence of rejects at the markets as this is seriously crippling our economy. This is most especially when it comes to agricultural products like sesame seeds and beans which sometimes contain some contaminants like aflatoxins- pesticides residue.”He reiterated, “When we came in, Nigerian cocoa beans were being rejected at the international market because of pesticide residue, but we held workshops with cocoa growers in Akure and since then, our cocoa exports have improved. NAFDAC’s collaboration with the NCS has come a long way right from the inception of the agency and we pledged our commitment at making such collaboration grow even stronger.“We are very happy that you talked about using technology to make our work easier and we will continue to improve in that regard. We are also aware of the radical reforms that are going on in the Nigerian Customs under your command and we fully support it and assure you that we are poised to partner with the NCS to keep Nigeria off smuggled counterfeit and substandard regulated products,” Orhii added.