Aflatoxins which are types of mycotoxins mainly found in commodities such as maize, groundnut, chilli pepper, rice are not visible to the eye.
According to the Ghana Standards Authority, the majority of diseases and cancers surfacing in our health sector can be attributed to aflatoxins which have infested our food commodities.
In an interview with Citi News on the sidelines of a National Aflatoxins Sensitisation and Management Project in Koforidua for agricultural extension officers, George Kojo Anti, the Business Development Manager of GSA said the low awareness of Aflatoxins has a tendency to affect governments flagship programs on agriculture and export of the country.
“Aflatoxins are already affecting us as a country. Far too many times we attempt to export some of our products and what happens is that these people who export do not go through the right processes.”
The Authority also appealed to the government to make quality assurance the bedrock of all agricultural initiatives being introduced by the government.
“This is affecting cereals that have been exported and gotten to the consignee countries and have been rejected at the point of entry and when these rejections occur, alerts are sent to the country and when they become too many sometimes the country is banned from exporting its products”.
On the training programme for farmers, George Kojo Anti called on the agricultural extension officers to educate and disseminate the information charged the farmers to present their products for testing.
“We are training the extension officers because they are on the grounds with the farmers and they will be moving to the communities to interact with the farmers. Basically what we are saying is that the things that we can see with our eyes like the armyworm and the likes, those ones we take serious but there are several of things that we do not see with our eyes that are even more dangerous than the fall armyworm and things we like to make noise about and this aflatoxin is one of them. There are ways of managing it and even preventing it and it is about us bringing this information to the doorsteps of the farmer.” Read Full Story
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