Editorial: Ghana’s Food Safety Regime Needs Urgent Reform

The Chronicle’s front page today carries a troubling report: traders at Accra’s Madina and Bohye markets allege that some vendors use chemicals to artificially ripen fruit and other produce. The claims, drawn from a video that circulated widely on social media, were raised during a stakeholder engagement organised by the La Nkwantanang-Madina Municipal Assembly.

Traders have called on the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) to investigate, warning that consumers may unknowingly be exposed to harmful substances, with some linking the alleged practice to rising rates of kidney disease in Ghana.

One trader put it starkly: “We, market women and killers are the same. Those who add chemicals to foodstuffs do not consume them; they only sell them.” She questioned how the chemicals entered the country, alleging that “most of the foodstuffs we sell are already poisoned” and called on government to identify and remove the substances from circulation, tighten oversight of chemical imports, and strengthen the supply chain against diversion of industrial chemicals into food markets.

It should be stressed that these are allegations, not established findings. No independent laboratory testing has been cited to substantiate the specific claims made at the meeting.

It is upon the basis of this that the La Nkwantanang-Madina Municipal Chief Executive, Alhaji Ibrahim Fusseini Faila, has ordered a committee to investigate. “We will set up a committee to look into it, and anyone found culpable will be severely dealt with,” he said, and the assembly has urged the FDA and other regulators to join the inquiry.

The Chronicle is aware this is not the first of such episode. Earlier this year, viral claims that vendors were frying plantain chips in oil laced with melted plastic (“rubber” or “olonka”) prompted an FDA investigation.

The authority concluded that the claim was false: market surveillance and laboratory testing found no plastic residue in sampled chips. More recently, a separate viral claim alleged that a chemical was used to thicken okra for sale, the FDA denied this too. The Chronicle commends the FDA for responding promptly and publicly in both instances.

That pattern cuts two ways. It is grounds for real caution before treating the latest allegations as fact, social media claims about food adulteration in Ghana have twice recently failed to survive scrutiny. But repeated scares also point to a genuine institutional weakness: Ghana lacks a farm-to-market traceability system capable of establishing quickly and independently of viral rumour, where produce came from and what was done to it. That gap is what allows each new allegation to spread unchecked for days before any authority can either confirm or debunk it.

It is well established internationally that calcium carbide, when used illicitly to ripen fruit, releases acetylene gas and may carry arsenic and phosphorus residues, and that health authorities elsewhere have documented risks including gastrointestinal illness and, with sustained exposure, more serious harm. Whether calcium carbide or any other substance is in fact behind the practices alleged at Madina and Bohye is precisely what an investigation needs to establish. The Chronicle takes no position on the truth of the specific allegations; our concern is the absence of a system capable of testing them quickly.

We are calling on the FDA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture to treat this as an early priority, not a routine follow-up. First, the FDA should sample produce from the named markets and publish results, as it did with the plantain chips claim within a defined timeframe, so the allegations are confirmed or dispelled quickly rather than left to fester.

Second, the FDA and MOFA should work toward a genuine traceability system tracing produce from farmgate to market stall, so that future allegations can be checked against records rather than left to circulate as rumour. Additionally, government should review how industrial and agricultural chemicals are imported and distributed, to reduce the risk of diversion into food markets, a concern the traders themselves have raised.

Ghanaians deserve food they can trust and regulators deserving of that trust must be seen to act  quickly, transparently and on evidence. The Chronicle will follow the investigation and report its findings as they emerge.

 

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