Poisons used to make food more beautiful, last longer

Toxic chemicals are being used by food sellers across Sub-Saharan Africa to improve the look of meat and fish, scientists and food inspectors say, putting the health of millions at risk.

Weak government testing capacities and informal food supply chains means there is little oversight of traders and fishermen, and almost no protection for unwary consumers.

However, veterinary specialists say there are techniques which can help people identify contaminated food before they buy it.

有了鱼，欺诈活动通常会在被捕获时开始。

According to Serge-Claire Nkolo, a veterinary surgeon and departmental delegate of the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries (MINEPIA) in the Cameroonian coastal city Douala: “What mostly happens is people pour a very toxic insecticide,加马林,到水里。”

“After a few minutes, all aquatic forms of life in the area will die and come to the surface. That’s when the fish are gathered.”.

Patricia Ngono, who sells smoked fish in the Youpwe fish market in Douala, says: “Rather than buy wood and use firewood, some saleswomen gather up leftover fabric from tailors and burn it to smoke the fish.”

Wild meat is affected too. Clément Polewa, a farm advisor in Douala, says some hunters use formalin, especially if they have gone into the bush for a hunting expedition lasting several days. Used to embalm and preserve bodies in morgues, some butchers use formalin to keep meat from going off.

Ngono说：“他们在游戏中使用此产品，以阻止其分解，以便将其保存到他们回到村庄之前。”

The US Environmental Protection Agency classifies formalin as a “probable human carcinogen”, linked to cancers of the nasal cavity and leukaemia.

“我们在进行的一项研究中的初步测试表明，牛奶中福尔马林的水平很高，这对人类健康有害”。

Ashagrie Zewdu Woldegiorgis，亚的斯亚贝巴大学食品科学与营养助理教授。

Milk medicine

According to Ashagrie Zewdu Woldegiorgis, assistant professor of food science and nutrition at the College of Natural Sciences of Addis Ababa University, farmers in Ethiopia use high levels of formalin to preserve milk before selling it to factories.

For the farmers, he says, formalin is referred to as “milk medicine” — an indication of the lack of knowledge about the chemical. “Our preliminary tests in an ongoing study show very high levels of formalin in milk that is hazardous for human health,” says Woldegiorgis.

Fisherman and traders do not admit to using these illegal substances: everyone simply claims to be aware of anecdotal evidence of such practices.

“A few years ago, after we stressed how vitally important this was, the fishermen in a village finally agreed to tell us which one of them had been bombing the river,” says Douala’s Serge-Claire Nkolo.

“The individual concerned kept claiming he was completely innocent, until one day, after a surveillance operation, we caught him red-handed.”

毫无疑问，农场顾问Polewa是问题的程度：“我们甚至有检查服务的情况下发现了福尔马林在我们城市既定零售店运营的鱼贩中使用的证据。”

The practice constitutes food fraud, according to Markus Lipp, head of the Food Safety and Quality Unit at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

“The use of formalin to preserve meat and other produce for longer periods is, as far as we know, not permitted anywhere and constitutes food fraud,” Lipp says.

水果和蔬菜

Lipp distinguishes between products that are used illegally and other chemicals, which are permitted for use, but which are often employed on fruit and vegetables in an inappropriate way and without proper oversight.

供应商介绍水果with phytosanitary products that accelerate the ripening process or make the produce appear to be perfectly ripe.

Guy-Merlin Wakam, a senior agricultural technician in Douala, explains that this practice draws on methods used in the cultivation of pineapples, where the plant growth regulator ethephon (also known as ethrel) or the plant hormones gibberellins are employed, following protocols for dosage and application.

瓦卡姆说：“在果实仍在茎上，在采摘之前已经成熟时，使用了埃特尔。”“目的是让他们采取淡黄色的色调。因为有些客户，尤其是海外的客户，认为菠萝不是黄色的，就不会成熟。”

喀麦隆农业部杜阿拉地区办事处质量控制部门负责人让·皮埃尔（Jean-Pierre MBA）说，贸易商随后使用相同的水果成熟技术，导致剂量远远超过了建​​议。beplay下载官网西西软件

“Traders simply draw on this method to try to control the ripening process of bananas and plantain,” he says.

“滥用科学”

先后拜会了,这导致了一个“滥用科学ence” by some traders who use excessive amounts of a permitted chemical just because it has been approved for use. He says that his research on the safety ofsodium benzoate for preservation of the flatbread injera，，，，a staple in Ethiopia, was supported by the Ethiopia Food and Drug Authority (EFDA).

The additive, says Woldegiorgis, was meant to improve the shelf life of injera from three days to ten days. “But illegal and unprofessional people are adding this chemical by themselves by trial and error by adding a huge dose at the expense of human health,” he says. “They only care about the shelf life being prolonged not safety and quality of the product and the chemical but for profits.”

The practice appears to be widespread, says Raphaël Onguéné, an academic at the University Institute of Technology (UIT) in Douala, who is also a producer of banana, pineapple and cocoa in Cameroon’s Yaoundé region.

“When I started out in agriculture, I very quickly noticed there was an overuse of phytosanitary products to help pineapples and plantain ripen,” he says.

Whistleblowing

Hilaire-Flavien Foumane, head of the Inspection and Fraud Repression Squad at Ministry of Commerce in Douala, says: “Thanks to other tradespeople turned whistleblowers, we dismantled a network of plantain traders who engaged in this practice. Strangely enough, the growers who provided them with the goods knew nothing about this.”

Douala’s Wakam describes how things work: “It’s mostly resellers who are guilty of these practices. A trader might have taken an order to provide ripe plantain within two or three days. They go and buy the fruit from a grower and then, without the producer knowing anything about this, treat it with ethrel or gibberellin to ensure it ripens ahead of their deadline.”

These practices have real health impacts for the people who eat this food.

杜阿拉大学食品和医学质量控制专家GisèleEtaméLoé说，她“因食用这些产品治疗的食物而录制的大量食物中毒案件感到震惊”。

食品安全

Loé describes a particularly memorable case she was involved in a few years ago: “Two people died after a whole family was hospitalised when they ate a local dish known as mbongo tchobi that was made with fish caught using Gamalin.”

According to the first comprehensivereport on food safetyfrom the World Health Organization, the agency says that unsafe food is responsible for 600 million cases of foodborne diseases and 420,000 deaths globally each year.

The report, by the Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group, said that 30 per cent of foodborne deaths occurred among children under five, with Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia recording the largest burden of foodborne diseases.

Loé points out that this is linked to the fact that all of these products are known to present a risk of acute or chronic toxicity. She adds that formalin, Gamalin, ethrel and gibberellin are all carcinogenic at certain doses.

“埃德雷尔可能非常有毒，对口腔和咽部产生极其腐蚀作用，这意味着胃和消化道可能会被穿孔，甚至可能发展出胃癌，”Loé说。behind the establishment of the industrial and pharmaceutical chemistry laboratory at UIT.

Avoiding toxins

There are a few tips consumers can follow to avoid toxic foods, says farm advisor Polewa.

“如果你去一个出口,你会看到一堆禁令anas or plantain in which all the individual fruits have reached the same level of maturity, it’s likely that they haven’t been left to ripen naturally,” he says. He points out that when a bunch of bananas is allowed to ripen naturally, the individual fruits will mature at their own pace; they will never all be ripe at the same time.

兽医恩科洛（Nkolo）鼓励消费者观察：“如果您被卖出了不吸引单一苍蝇的肉，那不是优质的肉。因为当肉类展示时，即使它们不能落在它上，苍蝇也很正常。”

先后拜会了敦促食品当局做随机checks, especially at informal markets, to enhance the quality of food sold — but he admits that food quality control may not be an easy task.

But Woldegiorgis says that informal businesses are often small-scale, some with no physical addresses or registration permits.

过去四年来，关于食品添加剂和化学物质滥用的报告数量不断增加，迫使肯尼亚的卫生和农业部开始计划beplay下载官网西西软件National Food Safety Authority。

In addition to looking to the need for authorities to carry out regular food safety inspections, experts are unanimous in highlighting the need for greater awareness among producers of fruit and vegetables, meat, and fish, as well as consumers.

For Douala’s Wakam, the solution also requires stronger regulation of the sale of controlled-use chemicals.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa French edition.