Keynote Address by
Prof. Edward S. Ayensu
Chairman, Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research (CSIR), Ghana
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to the organizing committee for inviting me to deliver the keynote address for this Regional Food Conference on Food Safety for Africa under the theme “Practical Actions to Promote Food Safety”.
The importance of food goes beyond it being the main source of energy and nutrition. Food also plays the enviable role of being the strategic tool for sustaining our health, for providing our livelihood security and for maintaining the very survival of the human race. That is why the world is no longer just interested in how much food is produced and consumed, but even more importantly, what quality of food is being supplied to consumers.
This demand for wholesome food has driven scientific researchers to probe and to deepen our understanding of the inputs, production, handling and end products of food, and possible hazards that they could pose to the consumer. We are all now aware that there exist some stages in the food chain which are critical in ensuring that wholesome food gets to the table of every consumer.
For example, the unsatisfactory post harvest handling of grains in many African countries, especially the countries that experience continuous hot and humid climatic conditions, has been held responsible for the high incidence of aflatoxin contamination of large quantities of crops that are produced in the region. Research studies indicate that in Africa the incidence of liver cancer shares a distinctive geographical distribution with that of aflatoxin contamination of food. Furthermore, this and other data show conclusively that aflatoxins are potentially carcinogenic to humans. These results should be a matter of great concern to all African governments and their friends because these grains constitute major staples for the people in the region.
It is therefore imperative that Africa builds the needed capacity to ensure that enough quantities of wholesome food are made available to consumers. This is a responsibility that our governments and the private sectors of our economy cannot afford to shed to others. The reason is that wholesome food holds the key to our livelihood security. Frankly speaking, the time has come for us to call on our own governments to take full responsibility to protect our consumers instead of placing their total reliance on this issue at the doorsteps of the traditional donors and international financial institutions.
I am, however, pleased to note that these concerns have been brought on board for deliberation at this conference.
It is also heart warming to observe that laudable efforts are being made by a number of African countries to put in place the necessary institutions and regulatory measures to promote and ensure consumer confidence in the food production chain. In my own country, Ghana, for example, the Food and Drugs Board, (FDB) the Ghana Standards Board, (GSB) the Ministries of Health, Food and Agriculture, Fisheries, the Environment and Science, and Tourism, just to mention a few, are all actively engaged in one way or the other in the surveillance and monitoring of food safety regulations in the country. Other countries also have made great efforts in improving the coordination of their national food control systems. For example, Morocco has instituted a Permanent Inter-ministerial Committee for Food Control.
It is therefore a good sign that African governments are increasingly conscious of the multi-sectoral nature of food safety issues. But there still exists the need to encourage national food safety bodies to become more active in the promotion and application of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) concept. Creative ways have to be found in the identification, strict control and monitoring of the most critical points of possible contamination within the African context which is characterized by many scattered producers and food handlers. It is obvious that we cannot ensure food safety successfully without dealing holistically with the concerns of the main players in the food industry. One cannot for instance, expect our farmers, with their present state of knowledge, to readily accept and voluntarily comply with all the regulations in respect of chemical handling and application on their farms.
Therefore, it is absolutely essential that a policy is developed to bring on board all the stakeholders in the food chain to share in the responsibility for safe, fit to eat, nutritious and wholesome food to all our people. Such a policy framework would ensure that farmers are trained to become conversant with the rules for applying various chemicals on their fields, while others in the succeeding points in the crop handling chain are equipped with the necessary skills to identify and accordingly handle the varied types of chemical and microbiological contamination.
In addition, African governments should put in place national monitoring programmes to provide accurate data on levels and trends in food contamination. Such monitoring programmes can be used as a basis for instituting preventative regulations. This is one of the surest ways of preventing unsafe food to be sold to the public.
All these measures cannot amount to much without extensive public education. The need for consumer awareness creation on a mass scale is not only highly desirable but also critical. I am pleased to observe that a number of NGOs in our countries are becoming consumer protection advocates, because they realise that consumers are becoming vulnerable to the commercial instincts of local and foreign distributors and importers of food. It is unfortunate to note that some food importers and their local distributors do not care if they put on the market expired food items which in many cases are not fit for human consumption.
It is gratifying to note that the countries of the region, in planning this conference have indicated in the objectives that they hold the issue of consumer awareness very dear in their calculation. Indeed, no effort must be spared to find practical solutions to create and strengthen consumer awareness in our countries as soon as practical. Africa's quest to become successful at pushing back some of its myriad problems, including the provision of wholesome food to the population and for export, depends in a large measure on the raising of food safety awareness of consumers.
The increasing globalization of food trade has notably resulted in shifting food consumption patterns, new production methods and technologies, faster trans-boundary transfer of microbiological and chemical hazards into the region. We need to be prompt in developing the human, legal and material capacities to deal with the aforementioned threats as well as the outbreak of new animal diseases such as the mad cow disease and the bird flu which is currently raging in some countries and also affects the human food supply.
In this regard, it is also important that Africa confronts the issue of genetically modified foods in a pragmatic manner, and not with just emotions, since biotechnological engineering has become a realistic scientific proposition for boosting agricultural productivity, improving resistance of crops to attacks by insects and diseases, and enhancing food quality. These are quite attractive prospects for Africa to consider in attempting to provide answers to the difficult challenges of providing both enough quantity and wholesome quality food to our peoples.
We cannot however, forget that no matter how attractive these scientific breakthroughs are, serious concerns have been raised in respect of biodiversity preservation, biosafety, and food safety in the long term. African scientists cannot remain passive or unconcerned while the rest of the world battles with new ideas which are conducive to the creation of the right institutional framework and regulatory safeguards for food safety. We must be actively involved in the cutting edges of the science and technology research being done in other countries.
Africa must begin to assert itself based on scientifically justifiable facts in order not to become a dumping ground, not only for unwholesome foods, but also, unworthy ideas in the bargain. I trust that this conference is more than capable of raising some of the critical interventions to ensure that food, whether produced locally or imported would meet the generally acceptable international standards of food safety.
I would like to take this opportunity to call on African countries to look beyond their individual country borders and to begin to explore ways and means of collaborating with other countries in the region, with international organizations, both public and private, and with civil society organizations in order to harmonise their legal and policy framework.
African governments must take the leadership role in handling this issue. We should not be passive! In fact we should not be despondent about the enormous difficulties that lie ahead. It is very possible that if African governments vocalise the terrifying statistics of our people who are exposed to unwholesome foods and the ensuing needless health problems we may encourage donor agencies, who are losing heart of Africa’s numerous problems, to rekindle their spirit of cooperation and development assistance programmes.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the fact that we have always benefited greatly from the support and assistance of the United Nations Organizations such as the FAO and the WHO, especially in the area of food safety. I trust that we can continue to count on them in the years ahead.
Thank you for your attention, and I wish you a successful conference.
