Food Fraud and The Nigeria Situation (2 of 3)
Food Fraud and Nigeria Situation (2 of 3)
History has it that food fraud is common in societies with little legal controls on food quality, poor monitoring and surveillances by authorities, and absence of food safety bill.
Notable incidents of food fraud are;
Spraying of water on stored grain to increase its weight
Used of diethylene glycol by some wine makers to fake sweet wines
Alum is added to disguise usage of lower-quality flour in expensive flours
Starch added to sausages
High fructose corn syrup or cane sugar, used to adulterate honey
Usage of formaldehyde to prevent spoilage of noodles, meat, fish, from the sun.
Water or brine injected into chicken, or other meats to increase their weight
Fruit juices may contain only water, dye, and sugary flavourings, why fruit is the listed ingredient on the label.
Milk from bovine cows has had milk from other types of animals, adulterated with reconstituted milk powder, urea, among other products (oil, caustic soda, sugar, salt, and skim milk powder).
Adulterated milk may also be watered down and then supplemented with melamine to raise the protein content. Melamine, an organic base chemical, is largely used in plastics, adhesives, and other products, and is known to pose a public health threat. Adulterated milk might also be added into infant formula and other milk-based products.
In one of my meetings with sales director, manager and executives while functioning as a post marketing surveillance personnel, a competitive brand in the flavoured milk drinks categories with date marking of 9 months as against 6 months standard requirements stipulated by NAFDAC was displayed before me. Visiting some of the malls, open markets or being meticulous about what goes into your mouth would definitely open you up to some shocking revelation about the industry
Reasons for Food Fraud
When demand exceeds supply
Greed
Excessive profits.
Porous food system
Absence of food safety bills
Lack of stringent punitive measure against fraudsters
Shortage of authentic ingredients.
Inadequate and unqualified personnel
Lack of updation of processing techniques.
Inadequate knowledge on the consequences and associated food safety risks.
Lack of awareness of dangers of food fraud and related food safety outbreaks
Types of Food Fraud
Substitution
False declaration of geographic, or varietal origin; substitution of common wheat for durum wheat; "Made in Nigeria", whereas, it is only packaged in Nigeria; substitution of Nigerian olive oil labeled as Spain "Goya oil"; substitution of synthetically produced yogurt drink for natural yogurt
False declaration of origin to evade taxes/tariffs; Imports of agro products or food items from different country, labelled as grouper to avoid anti-dumping duties, for instance, the trans-shipment of Chinese products, through other Asian nations to avoid anti-dumping duties or to mask the true origin of potentially unsafe product
False declaration of production process; this is common in production of satchet water
Removal
Intentional omission of an authentic and valuable part of a food substances without the consumers’ knowledge. Example is the filtration of natural honey to remove pollen or vital residue from its beehive resulting into poor quality honey
Addition
Addition of small amounts of a non-authentic substance to mask inferior quality ingredient. E.g the addition of a colour additive like "shakara" to low quality palm oil, same with "Garri Ijebu" adulteration
Peanut Corporation of America in the year 2009 was charge for Salmonella outbreak with numerous offenses in connection with this pathogenic bacteria. Report has it that 9 people were killed and 700 were hospitalized.
This case happened to be one of the biggest food recalls in U.S. history, including 3,912 products that contain peanut butter and peanut paste ingredients, like cookies, crackers, cereal, candy, ice cream, and other foods, which were manufactured by more than 200 companies
Food fraud usually is perpetrated by actors normally involved in the food chain. These players have regular access to the food product value chains e.g., manufacturers or distributors. Funny enough they quite understand the market dynamic; regulatory behaviour, consumer lifestyle, demand and supply trends,etc.
Nigerians, there had been situation where expired raw materials, rat infested ingredients, contaminated products and alternative banned items had been blended, formulated together to produce processed finished products for consumers. I do hope that an acquaintance of yours, friends, sibling and neighbors working as in-process staff, QC, food handler in the mixing section and related personnels in this sector would speak up if you are inquisitive enough. However, food safety whistleblower law is peculiar to minimizing the raising food fraud in the society
History has it that food fraud is common in societies with little legal controls on food quality, poor monitoring and surveillances by authorities, and absence of food safety bill.
Notable incidents of food fraud are;
Spraying of water on stored grain to increase its weight
Used of diethylene glycol by some wine makers to fake sweet wines
Alum is added to disguise usage of lower-quality flour in expensive flours
Starch added to sausages
High fructose corn syrup or cane sugar, used to adulterate honey
Usage of formaldehyde to prevent spoilage of noodles, meat, fish, from the sun.
Water or brine injected into chicken, or other meats to increase their weight
Fruit juices may contain only water, dye, and sugary flavourings, why fruit is the listed ingredient on the label.
Milk from bovine cows has had milk from other types of animals, adulterated with reconstituted milk powder, urea, among other products (oil, caustic soda, sugar, salt, and skim milk powder).
Adulterated milk may also be watered down and then supplemented with melamine to raise the protein content. Melamine, an organic base chemical, is largely used in plastics, adhesives, and other products, and is known to pose a public health threat. Adulterated milk might also be added into infant formula and other milk-based products.
In one of my meetings with sales director, manager and executives while functioning as a post marketing surveillance personnel, a competitive brand in the flavoured milk drinks categories with date marking of 9 months as against 6 months standard requirements stipulated by NAFDAC was displayed before me. Visiting some of the malls, open markets or being meticulous about what goes into your mouth would definitely open you up to some shocking revelation about the industry
Reasons for Food Fraud
When demand exceeds supply
Greed
Excessive profits.
Porous food system
Absence of food safety bills
Lack of stringent punitive measure against fraudsters
Shortage of authentic ingredients.
Inadequate and unqualified personnel
Lack of updation of processing techniques.
Inadequate knowledge on the consequences and associated food safety risks.
Lack of awareness of dangers of food fraud and related food safety outbreaks
Types of Food Fraud
Substitution
False declaration of geographic, or varietal origin; substitution of common wheat for durum wheat; "Made in Nigeria", whereas, it is only packaged in Nigeria; substitution of Nigerian olive oil labeled as Spain "Goya oil"; substitution of synthetically produced yogurt drink for natural yogurt
False declaration of origin to evade taxes/tariffs; Imports of agro products or food items from different country, labelled as grouper to avoid anti-dumping duties, for instance, the trans-shipment of Chinese products, through other Asian nations to avoid anti-dumping duties or to mask the true origin of potentially unsafe product
False declaration of production process; this is common in production of satchet water
Removal
Intentional omission of an authentic and valuable part of a food substances without the consumers’ knowledge. Example is the filtration of natural honey to remove pollen or vital residue from its beehive resulting into poor quality honey
Addition
Addition of small amounts of a non-authentic substance to mask inferior quality ingredient. E.g the addition of a colour additive like "shakara" to low quality palm oil, same with "Garri Ijebu" adulteration
Peanut Corporation of America in the year 2009 was charge for Salmonella outbreak with numerous offenses in connection with this pathogenic bacteria. Report has it that 9 people were killed and 700 were hospitalized.
This case happened to be one of the biggest food recalls in U.S. history, including 3,912 products that contain peanut butter and peanut paste ingredients, like cookies, crackers, cereal, candy, ice cream, and other foods, which were manufactured by more than 200 companies
Food fraud usually is perpetrated by actors normally involved in the food chain. These players have regular access to the food product value chains e.g., manufacturers or distributors. Funny enough they quite understand the market dynamic; regulatory behaviour, consumer lifestyle, demand and supply trends,etc.
Nigerians, there had been situation where expired raw materials, rat infested ingredients, contaminated products and alternative banned items had been blended, formulated together to produce processed finished products for consumers. I do hope that an acquaintance of yours, friends, sibling and neighbors working as in-process staff, QC, food handler in the mixing section and related personnels in this sector would speak up if you are inquisitive enough. However, food safety whistleblower law is peculiar to minimizing the raising food fraud in the society
Comments
Post a Comment