Columnists

Focus food safety needs to cut rising health costs

farm

A maize farm in Kitale. PHOTO | JARED NYATAYA | NMG

In 2018 the United Nations General Assembly announced June 7 of every year as the World Food Safety Day in order to create awareness on food safety. This year’s theme is ‘Safer food, better health’. Safe food is one of the most critical guarantors for good health.

As the world marks this important day, we as a country should deeply reflect on food safety issues bedeviling us. The talk of provision of universal health care by the government may end up being a mirage if we do not adopt a preventative as opposed to curative approach to health care.

Preventing foodborne illnesses through robust food safety practises at all levels of the food chain would contribute greatly to this course.

Foodborne diseases encompass a wide range of illnesses from diarrhoea to cancers, and are caused by contamination of food at any stage of the food production, delivery and consumption chain.

According to the world health organisation (WHO), Africa has the world’s highest per capita incidents of food illnesses causing 137,000 deaths and 91 million cases of diseases annually. The health costs and socio-economic associated losses are astronomical.

In the recent past, there have been disturbingly frequent cases of food recalls at the national and also regional level. The recalls have been triggered by food suspected not to meet the standards for safe human consumption.

In November 2019, the Kenya Bureau of Standard (Kebs) ordered local manufacturers to recall seven peanut butter brands from the market citing aflatoxin levels above the legal specification. Aflatoxin is a form of mycotoxin – toxic compounds that are naturally produced by fungi called Aspergillus flavus – that commonly infects food crops, and can cause liver damage and cancer in humans if consumed.

In Kenya maize, ground nut, wheat and milk are the main source of aflatoxin exposure as highlighted by the International Livestock Research Institute.

In August 2021, Kebs blacklisted 27 maize and porridge flour brands after they failed to meet quality standards. Several well-known brands of maize flour were taken off supermarket shelves, after a warning about unsafe levels of aflatoxin.

In October 2021, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) Competition Commission reported that Ceres apple juice brand had been recalled from six Comesa countries including Kenya due to suspected patulin levels above the 50 parts per billion (ppb) legal limit.

According to WHO, patulin is a form of mycotoxin and consumption of high levels of patulin may cause nausea, gastrointestinal disturbances and vomiting.

More recently, in March 2022, the Comesa watch dog notified the public not to consume some popular Kinder Joy chocolate recalled from the European and US markets by the Italian candy manufacturer, suspected to contain Salmonella.

In yet another advisory by Comesa Competition Commission in April 2022, consumers in East Africa, save for Tanzania and South Sudan, were warned not to consume some chili packets, and chicken and vegetable flavoured instant noodles commonly referred to as Indomie, that had been recalled from the Egyptian market due to suspected presence of aflatoxin and pesticide residues in quantities that exceeded safe limits.

According to the WHO, exposure to large amounts of pesticides causes acute food poisoning and may even lead to cancer. The most recent study conducted in the past three years by the Ministry of Health and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology found that 15percent of maize millers produced flour that did not meet aflatoxin standards in Kenya.

The common theme in these recent documented food safety incidents is mycotoxin contamination and particularly aflatoxin, but also pesticide and microbial contamination.

Kenya is considered a world hotspot for aflatoxin contamination and it’s therefore incumbent on the government to take this food safety issue seriously as it may be a contributor to the rising cancer cases in the country, as postulated in an article published on 26th May in Business Daily titled ‘Aflatoxin links in Kenya cancer burden”. According to WHO, cancer is the third leading cause of death after infectious and cardiovascular diseases in Kenya.

The good news is that most foodborne illnesses can be prevented. We cannot, therefore, overemphasize the importance of the Food and Feed Safety Control and Coordination Bill currently in parliament. The Bill is anticipated to ensure effective and efficient coordination of food and feed safety in the country.

However, when enacted, the new law must have strong implementation and enforcement oomph backed with adequate resources to sensitise the public and food industry as well as educate, train and equip staff.

We need to leverage technology and advanced detection and surveillance techniques that would allow inspectors and other enforcers capabilities for on-the-spot rapid testing, and real time data transmission for swift actions to protect public health.

The other bright spot is that there exist ways of combating aflatoxin but the national and county governments need to be deliberate and strategic about it. In a previous article in this newspaper, I spoke of an integrated approach involving taping into crop genetic resources, controlling insect damage, managing toxic fungi, and proper post-harvest handling to mitigate mycotoxin contamination.

I will go further and emphasize that we need to curb aflatoxin contamination right from the source, at famers’ field.

Therefore, the government should invest in biological control agents like Aflasafe – with efficacy of 80 percent to 100percent, technology developed by the United States Department of Agriculture and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and localised by Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization – or similar products that are applied in the field during planting, to crowd out aflatoxin producing fungi.

The other approach is for the government to allow for the cultivation of Bt maize – a genetically modified maize with an intrinsic ability to resist insect damage and with a global history of safe use – that is awaiting commercialization approval at Cabinet level.

Bt maize has been shown to have lower levels of aflatoxin contamination as a consequence of less insect damage and reduced fungal contamination. Growing Bt maize also reduces usage of pesticides, that when overused, by farmers desperately trying to control pests like the fall army worm, may eventually end up in the food chain at unsafe levels.

The frequency of food withdrawals in the region may be attributed to increased surveillance that is exposing food safety incidences more regularly, but also points to inadequate food safety infrastructure and processes along the food value chain as well as enforcement and compliance gaps that require urgent remedial actions by governments.

Dr Allan Liavoga, Researcher and Food Safety Expert. [email protected]