According to the European Food
Safety Authority, the rejected beans were found to contain between 0.03mg per
kilogramme to 4.6mg/kg of dichlorvos
pesticide, when the acceptable maximum residue limit is 0.01mg/kg. The embargo
is a reflection of our inability to adhere to global standards, and this has
come to haunt us at the international level again. Overturning the ban requires
a firm approach to enforcing standards at all times. But
the ban is not a bolt from the blue. For some time, the EU has been warning
Nigeria that the items constitute danger to human health because they “contain
a high level of unauthorised pesticide.” The pesticide is applied when the
products are being prepared for export.
The EU said it had issued 50
notifications to Nigerian beans exporters since January 2013. It is baffling
that the Nigerian authorities didn’t take any significant steps to reverse the
situation. Likewise, the United Kingdom also issued 13 border rejection alerts
to Nigerian beans exporters between January and June 2015. Our lax system will
continue to hamper the economy from appropriating the benefits derivable from a
revived export programme. It confounds many that this
problem has been with us for some time and nothing strategic has been done to
deal with the situation. In 2013 for instance, 24 commodities of Nigerian
origin exported to the UK were rejected, while the figure climbed to 42 food
products in 2014. Some of the items were said to have been contaminated by aflatoxins,
making them unfit for consumption.
The excuse by Paul Orhii, the
Director-General, National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control
that exporters caused the problem by not complying with regulatory requirements
for semi-processed and processed commodities is untenable. NAFDAC has not
conducted its regulatory oversight properly and needs to put stringent measures
in place to monitor our products and guarantee them as safe for export before
the next EU review in 2016. The Ministry of Agriculture did not pay sufficient
attention to the problem either.
The ban on Nigerian foods
provokes some questions. First, how do we preserve the foods that we eat
locally? Second, how safe are the foods we import into the country? With our
predilection for manipulating the system, Nigerian consumers might be
susceptible to poisonous food imported from overseas. Take for example, the imported
semi-processed poultry products and meat: several studies conducted by
researchers and public agencies in markets in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt
are revealing. A study by Okiomah
Abu, a nutritional enzymologist, says “poultry
products imported into the country contain toxic and heavy metals that can
worsen the occurrence of food-borne diseases” because of the combination of
feeds the animals eat.
Ayoola
Oduntan, the President of the Poultry Association of
Nigeria, said: “It has been discovered that smuggled
poultry products contain (a) high level of bacteria. Also, toxic chemicals and
solvents are used in preserving them so that their owners can get them into the
country to be sold at prices cheaper than we (PAN members) are selling.”
We should be wary. In March 2014,
Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, the then Minister of Agriculture, had to personally
order the destruction of a large consignment of contaminated imported frozen
fish stored in a warehouse operated by Indians in Lagos. In a 2015 report, the
World Health Organisation said, “Food contaminants, such as harmful parasites,
bacteria, viruses, prions, chemical or radioactive substances, cause more than
200 diseases – ranging from infectious diseases to cancers.” The global health
body added that unsafe food is linked to the death of about 2 million people
annually. However, a report said the
Nigerian Customs Service had recently started enforcing the ban on imported
poultry products, which are massively smuggled into the country. But government
at the three tiers should also make policies to boost poultry and fish farming
in the country to meet local demand and for export.
As a way forward, we could follow
the standard practice in other climes like India, the UK, China and the United
States, which operate effective food safety and regulatory agencies that
monitor products stringently. US authorities are still battling China, South
Korea, Mexico and South Africa to review a ban placed on American poultry and
egg imports over the avian flu scare that broke out in December 2014. Last
month, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India ordered Nestlé, the
Swiss multinational, to withdraw its instant noodles from the market over
safety concerns.
The Ministry of Health, NAFDAC,
the Standards Organisation of Nigeria and the newly inaugurated National Food
Safety Management Committee should see the EU ban as a wake-up call to sanitise
food imported into Nigeria, and those being consumed at home. The EU action suggests that our
unfavourable balance of trade position with our international partners will
worsen as we cannot export more agricultural goods. The first quarter figures
(2015) released by the National Bureau of Statistics showed that crude oil and
gas accounted for 89.2 per cent of our total export of N3.23 trillion with
other exports constituting only 10.8 per cent. The nation imported goods and
services worth N1.64 trillion within the same period. We should reverse this
dependency on imports and harness our natural resources to become self-reliant
in food production. (As seen in Punch)
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