Aflatoxin threat and food safety for citizens

The furore over aflatoxin in coconut oil has resurfaced the need to protect citizens from unscrupulous traders, importers, and manufacturers of food items, who sell anything to unsuspecting consumers to make a fast buck; without considering the damage they cause to the general public.

This also showed how impotent our laws, regulatory agencies,

are, when it comes to protecting the interests of the consumers. There are several organs which are supposed to carry out the above, but I have not seen any progress made by them in the past two decades. Even the fines or jail terms imposed against the culprits have not been increased, though gradually the offences are becoming grave.

The local authority, within the administrative limits of the Municipality, is charged with the regulation, control and administration of all matters relating to public health. It is in this context that Municipalities are expected to play their role in ensuring the food safety in their area. Under the Food Act, the Municipality is the Food Authority of the area. Most of the food items that are imported to the country by sea, end up in warehouses in the city. The items are then distributed in the city and all over the country. The Public Health Laboratory Service in the Colombo Municipal Council was established over 110 years ago. Testing of food items was started around 50 years ago, and the laboratory service is divided into Microbiological, Pathological and Chemical analytical sections.

This service was vastly improved by the late Dr. Suranjan de Silva, City Microbiologist/Chief Medical Officer of Health, by purchasing the latest equipment for the laboratories and carrying out testing of food items sold in the city. The chemical analysis was done by the City Analyst, and in the period between 2000 and 2015 the laboratories were greatly improved, and the Food Inspectors brought in a lot of samples of cooked and raw food items for microbiological and chemical analysis, including coconut oil.

The Council also generated an income when establishments wanted their products tested for quality. In fact, as the MRI and the Govt. Analysts were burdened with other work; it is these two laboratories that did the bulk of the work. Unfortunately, this is not so today. The system was gradually dismantled after 2015 by a few Municipal Officials, the guardians of public health in Colombo, who give lame excuses and only a skeletal service is remaining, leading to much frustration among those who worked hard to improve the same.

The aflatoxin issue has raised the need to have a proper laboratory service to check all the food items, cooked or raw, to safeguard the health of the people. It is, therefore, necessary for the present administration of the Municipality to take action to re-engineer the process to carry out these laboratory investigations, re-staff, re-equip the laboratory or for the government to have a separate authority, as they did by establishing the NMRA for the drugs, by establishing a similar separate National Food Authority with laboratory facilities for the whole country, by drawing out the staff who did laboratory investigations on food from their present institutions.

Dr. Pradeep Kariyawasam

Former CMOH/CMC