Professor Matilda Aseidu, a Nutritionist at the Department of Nutrition and Food Science of the University of Ghana, has made known that, the country must intensify attempts to improve on food safety, because of the activities of food vendors who are steadily springing up in the country without proper supervision of their activities.
According to her, the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) must scale up its surveillance efforts and take steps to clear food vendors without permits off the streets, as their operations are a source of danger to people’s health and lives.
Professor Matilda Asiedu, who was speaking in an interview on the recent news about the food poisoning incident at Oyibi Bush canteen in the Kpone Katamanso District, emphasised on the need for authorities to take inspection and supervision seriously, especially at a time considered to be difficult due to high prices of food, and vendors wanting to find a means of making profit from their operations at the least cost.
“Due to lifestyles and other circumstances, many more people are patronising food prepared from outside their homes and that has also led to an increase in food vendors. If the activities of these vendors are not properly regulated and supervised to conform to the health and safety rules, that could be dangerous.”
Prof Aseidu
The Nutritionist opined that, “Government should resource the FDA to do proper surveillance on street foods that we buy. Every FDA office in the districts should be given the needed logistics and human resource to do their work well. This incident is a wake-up call and our authorities must up their game in ensuring food safety not only on the streets, but in restaurants as well.”
Last Week’s Incident
last week, there were news of a suspected food poisoning incident at Oyibi in the Kpone Katamanso Municipal Assembly in the Greater Accra Region affecting more than 40 people with five suspected deaths.
The FDA, following the incident, issued a statement confirming the incident and said 53 people were hospitalised with one dead.
The food safety regulator, thus, suspended the operations of the food vending joint, Yellow Sisi, and three others, after an environmental assessment of the food vending sites and the food preparation site located at Malejor and three vending sites at Bush Canteen, Prison Joint, and Sharp Curve.
Initial reports from that assessment revealed poor food handling practices which could have resulted in the contamination of the food, leading to the foodborne disease outbreak.
However, talking about what might have caused the food poisoning, Prof Asiedu, divulged that although the causative agent had not been identified in the instant case, the problem could result from how food was stored. “People these days use all forms of chemicals to preserve their food from spoilage which later turn out to be poisonous to the body,” she noted.
“We have to wait for the investigation to be concluded but I wouldn’t attribute it to somebody not washing hands properly but rather the food itself because it affected many people. It could be an issue of harmful chemical or bacteria that resisted heat.”
Prof Aseidu
The Nutritionist further warned against eating food that had become mouldy, because it could cause serious stomach upset or make one sick. “People must try and prepare food at home to ensure their own safety” Prof. Aseidu stated.
Food vendors, she added, must have a way of serving their food without their hands coming into contact with the food .”The hand used to handle the money is the same bare hands used to serve the food and that is unhygienic,” emphasising that the general public must exercise their right in ensuring that the environment in which they bought food was clean and safe.
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