NAFDAC, the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, has said to have implemented new measures to reduce the prevalence of unbranded cereals and other food items of industrial scale.
Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, the director general, stated this at the conclusion of an open dialogue and feedback session with food manufacturing companies that unbranded milk and cereals pose health risks to undiscerning consumers due to the method of dispensing them in unsanitary conditions.
Mrs. Eva Edwards, director of Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, FSAN, represented Adeyeye in registering the Agency’s concerns about the perennial problem of the ubiquity of bulk food items found in markets, possibly from manufacturing plants or their suppliers, describing it as unacceptable.
She said that the materials were brought into the nation because firms applied to utilise them in the production of NAFDAC-registered products.
“We are concerned that we find these items being sold in measures, scoops in the open markets. So we are looking at that process of issuing permits for bulk food raw materials very critically,” she noted.
According to her, the Agency has implemented new processes for analysing and verifying the utilisation records of each firm that requests bulk food raw material import licenses.
“We don’t want to just see your stock cards, we want to know what you imported in the previous year. We want to know what you used because there are some calculations that we need to make,” she added.
cc: Daily Post Ng
