The preponderance of hazardous food items from China in the Nigerian market underscores the regulatory failures of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON).
NAFDAC was created to safeguard public health by ensuring that only the right quality foods, drugs and other regulated products are manufactured, exported, imported, advertised, sold and used in the country.
Similarly, the Act establishing the SON mandates it to ensure that goods produced in or imported into the country—whether foods, beverages, electronics, leather– meet expected international and safety standards.
But the two regulatory bodies have failed to check influx of substandard tomato paste brands from China and other countries into Africa’s largest economy, even when there is evidence that they constitute health risks.
NAFDAC particularly, has refused to implement a pilot study it conducted, which indicate that many tomato paste brands from China in the Nigerian market today are substandard and can cause terminal diseases such as diabetes, kidney failure, organ failures and cancer.
On its part, the SON has failed to checkmate the poor quality of many products from China, which are often unsafe and involve a lot of replacement costs.
In February 2015, NAFDAC conducted a pilot study on tomato pastes packaged in tins and sachets (retail packs) imported from China into Lagos through Apapa and Tincan seaports, as well as Seme border (in Benin Republic) and NAHCO air cargo terminals.
A document obtained by BusinessDay reveals that on beginning the study, NAFDAC officials visited 27 main markets and four major supermarkets around Lagos and submitted them for laboratory analysis. One of the focal points of the laboratory tests was to see whether the pastes met the 28 percent minimum for tomato content, specified by the CODEX Standards and the Nigerian Industrial Standards (NIS) or not.
Three hundred and thirty samples were purchased by NAFDAC and submitted to the laboratory for analysis, but only 314 were eventually released. Incidentally, out of 314 released, 286 of these tomato pastes from China, representing 91.1 percent, were found unsatisfactory in terms of tomato content. Only 28 returned satisfactory, even though both satisfactory and unsatisfactory tomato pastes had the same red colour.
The red colour in most of the tomato pastes indicates an addition of colouring, which is prohibited, dangerous to health and shows that Chinese companies are merely adding colour, rather than the raw material called concentrates, into tomato pastes imported into Nigeria.
As part of its findings, NAFDAC admitted that the food and safety implication and attendant health effects were alarming, pointing out that companies of registered tomato paste products from China were conniving with the Chinese manufacturers to dump substandard products to unsuspecting Nigerian consumers.
According to health experts, such an addition of colour can cause cancer, kidney diseases, organ failure and diabetes, among other terminal diseases.
Following the alarming discoveries, NAFDAC recommended that imported tomato pastes in retail packs from China should be suspended, while importers of few brands of tomato paste in retail packs would henceforth be subjected to comprehensive Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) re-assessment before decisions would be taken. NAFDAC also recommended that all other importers should change manufacturing source until measures were taken to minimise dumping of substandard products from China.
NAFDAC, which conducted this study, has, for almost one year, refused to enforce these recommendations to save the lives of Nigerians.
The economic impact of the influx of these substandard food products from China is that billions of investments made by local manufacturers are threatened.
“Why are we so happy to take our jobs somewhere?” Eric Umeofia, chief executive officer, Erisco Food Limited asked BusinessDay in an interview.
“We have big demands in Nigeria but the real demands are in China. Tomato pastes are coming in through ports under different names. Yes, I agree that regulatory agencies cannot make pronouncement on what is happening. There may be more to it,” Umeofia said.
“I have had some Indians threaten to close down my business. If I had gone into importation, I would have made more money, but I am here because I love the country, but some people are conniving to sabotage this economy,” he added.
Sani Dangote, president, Nigerian Agribusiness Group (NABG) and group vice president of Dangote Industries Limited, told BusinessDay that this type of practice cannot end except the government stops listening to saboteurs, who pretending to help the economy, ask her to give them more time so that they keep importing.
The European Union in August, banned, till 2016, Nigerian beans from coming into its market. The European Food Safety Authority said the rejected beans were found to contain between 0.03mg per kilogramme to 4.6mg/kg of dichlorvos pesticide, despite that the acceptable maximum residue limit was 0.01mg/kg.
Other food items banned were sesame seeds and melon seeds. There were reports that the EU had before the ban, issued 50 notifications to Nigerian exporters, saying that the pesticide used for the food items was harmful to human health.
However, in the usual Nigerian manner, the notifications were dumped into the trash cans, revealing the regulatory failures of NAFDAC and the SON, which both have the responsibility to ensure things of this nature do not happen.
ODINAKA ANUDU
