POISON ON THE PLATE

            Image COURTESY

Humanity is threatened. The whole world has been under siege in the hands of a virus manufactured in some sophisticated bio-safety level 4 laboratories in Wuhan, China. Conspiracy theorists claim so, and all facts point towards that. Or will you buy the wet market narrative? Anyway, isn’t everything made in China? The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic. Many lives have been lost, and the number is escalating with each passing day. And this forms the basis of my article. Far from the Covid-19 global crisis, Kenyans are and have been dying softly and slowly. There is a serious concern of the rise of chemical laced foodstuff on our shelves. My people are dying because of little knowledge. Greed is wiping out a generation silently.

In 2011, the then Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) boss Kioko Mang’eli addressing Parliamentary Committee projected a rise in cancer cases in this decade. Today, we are living this reality. Cancer has taken lives of the mighty and meek in equal measure. At that moment in time, Kenya was importing maize that had lethal levels of Aflatoxins. Did the government respond to the revelations? What did you expect? The solutions cycle remained and remains the same. First, they convene a commission of inquiry, and then publish a report and recommendations. These recommendations are meant to create an impression, and not for implementation per se. The case is buried and forgotten.

Has this trend stopped? You be the judge. Copper, mercury, yeast and moulds are the poisons Kenyans had been consuming for long believing it were genuine sugar. In 2019, an analysis carried out on samples of the 1,400 bags of illicit sugar seized by police in different operations revealed that some of the sugar confiscated was contaminated with water insoluble matter. This was a scary finding. The Ministry of Health, KEBS and Ministry of Interior led by one Dr. Fred Matiang’i confirmed that the tests carried out by the government chemist were shocking. The dangers that Kenyans have been exposed to while consuming the sugar, medics note, are capable of causing some type of cancer and harming internal organs. Despite the sacks of the sugar being labeled as ‘not safe for human consumption’ unscrupulous traders repackaged them into 1kg and 2kg, disguised as local brands. WHO indicates that elemental mercury is toxic to the central and peripheral nervous system. The international health body also points out that ingestion and inhalation of mercury vapour can produce harmful effects on the digestive, immune systems, lungs and kidneys. Does anybody care? The traders’ sole focus is on profits at the expense of human health.

Do you remember the NTV’s Red Alert expose of July 2019? The report found out that unsuspecting consumers were, and are still buying poisonous meat from different supermarkets across the country. The meat is laced with Sodium metabisulfite, a chemical used to preserve food products if applied in the right amounts. Red Alert revealed that a number of unidentified retail chains in the country use the chemical to stop meat from going bad before the same meat is repackaged, put on display and marked as “fresh and juicy”. After this expose, there was a public outcry that did not yield any fruits. We are back to business as usual. Ignorance is worse than poverty, my good friend Allan Mulanda constantly says.

We love fruits. And throughout all seasons, we buy them to meet our body vitamin needs. Investigations in the past have unearthed rampant use of calcium carbide – an artificial ripening agent – by greedy traders and supermarkets. The chemical is used to hasten ripening of bananas, oranges, mangoes and apples for sale. The chemical uniformly ripens fruits making them attractive to customers.  Samples taken from three leading supermarkets and groceries in Nairobi and Mombasa tested positives for this chemical which is used for welding and making plastics. Research has it that wholesalers in major fruits markets of Gikomba, Nairobi, Marikiti and Kongowea in Mombasa are using the chemical secretly.

We become what we eat. The use of pesticides has skyrocketed over the years following the emergence of the new pests and diseases as the world struggles with harsh effects of climate change. Agricultural specialists have raised the red flag, noting the high pesticide usage is a threat to consumers, the environment and is unsustainable. Most Kenyan farmers are misusing pesticides thus compromising food safety. Route to Food Initiative, a sustainable farming organisation, elucidates that many pesticides are acutely toxic, have long-term toxic effects, are endocrine disrupters, and are known to cause a high incidence of severe or irreversible adverse effects. They proceed to assert that there are products on the Kenyan market, which are certainly classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic, endocrine disrupters, neurotoxic and many which show clear effects on reproduction. In the same vein, Bitter Harvest, the African Uncensored documentary on use of pesticides in Kenya – paints a sad state of affairs, in their study, some chemicals used in Kenya are banned in some parts of the world.

There is another thriving criminal underworld that is more interested in transformer oil. They dice with death while siphoning oil from the transformers. Reports have established that transformer oil is sold locally in the shops. Researchers have disclosed that crooked fast-food owners mix the oil with the cooking oil and use it to deep fry chips, chicken, bhajias, samosas and mandazis among other food stuff. Apparently, unlike vegetable oil, transformers oil is stable when heated. Therefore, these criminals mix it with cooking oil to prevent the latter from darkening or deteriorating fast. Usually when exposed to heat as it happens when frying fish and chips, vegetables oil depreciates faster. But when it is mixed with transformer oil, one can reuse it for several months without it darkening. Transformers oil, which is made from petroleum, when used for cooking has adverse health effects on the body. Petroleum oil contains chemicals that are unsafe when ingested. People should be careful of what and where they eat.

Recently the police raided a godown in Kariobangi South, Nairobi, where expired rice and sugar were being repackaged. The businessman had been repackaging rice, sugar and popcorns in new bags showing reviewed manufacturing and expiry dates. In the same building, Brazilian sugar repackaged as Ndhiwa Sukari was seized. In another case, police arrested two people who were repackaging expired wheat in Dandora, Nairobi. On different occasions we have had many foodstuff ranging from maize flour, peanut butter to loaves of bread being taken off the supermarket shelves over high levels of chemicals. These usually occur after consumers have been exposed to these goods for a substantial amount of time.  If you eat expired or spoilt food, you could develop symptoms of food poisoning. How many times have you had food poisoning and could not trace the toxic food you consumed? The symptoms of a food borne illness can include fever, stomach cramps, diarrhoea, nausea, and vomiting. Expired food may contain dangerous amounts of lethal bacteria. Notably, some bacterial toxins found in expired food can damage the kidney and possibly be life threatening.

Do I need to remind you that the mouth-watering piece of chicken that you regularly devour at your local restaurant or in your house could be contaminated with Anti-Retroviral (ARV) drugs, which are meant to slow down the horror HIV virus? Reliable information points that commercial farmers are adding ARVs to broiler feed to enhance weight gain and are able to sell off the fowls at four weeks. Kenyan farmers are not the only ones in this apparent mischief, in Uganda, there are reported cases of misuse of ARVs to fatten pigs, while in Zimbabwe, Parliament was in recent times told of instances whereby chicken imported from Brazil being smeared with embalming fluids normally used on dead bodies in order to preserve them and make them appear fresh by the time of being sold. Your mama githeri and that beloved restaurant are not as innocent as they look, they allegedly use panadol; the popular painkiller to tenderize meat, maize, beans and green grams so as to save on cooking fuel. We are not safe.

Months ago in Kenya, Twitter was awash with claims that a certain brand of bread in the market was being preserved using formalin. Formalin, a colourless substance is derived from formaldehyde, which is a known cancer causing agent. The best known use of formalin is the preservation of dead bodies in the mortuaries. It can also be used illegally to increase the shelf life of fresh food. By using this unsafe preservative, the intention of the manufacturer is to ensure longer shelf life of the product. So if these allegations about it being used to preserve bread are true, how long have Kenyans consumed formalin in bread? How many are at risk of contracting cancer because of this?

Our food should be our medicine. Or medicine will be our food. When will all these practices be addressed? Why are we digging our own graves? Why are we this greedy? Our compromised public health institutions are toothless and ill equipped. In most cases they are in bed with the unscrupulous traders. We are a dying people. Ignorance is worse than poverty. My people are dying because of greed. As we fight the killer Covid-19, we must not lose sight of the dreaded cancer. It is time we clear the mess in the food industry if we are to save this generation.

Allan Tom Odero  

Sociologist (BA), Researcher, Socio-political Critic and a Development Practitioner. Currently pursuing Law (LLB).