Regulation of food industry overdue

Drug outlets would be under more scrutiny because as technocrats from the ministry of health explained, the lax in the control of who accesses medicines has contributed to drug resistance for diseases like malaria.

Government has announced plans to amend the 1993 National Drug Policy and Authority Act to include a provision on regulation of the food industry.
The amendment would give birth to a new law—the National Food and Drug Act. Its aim would be to ensure quality and safety of drugs and food that the public consumes.

Drug outlets would be under more scrutiny because as technocrats from the ministry of health explained, the lax in the control of who accesses medicines has contributed to drug resistance for diseases like malaria.

The National Drug Authority (NDA) as it is today was established to regulate and ensure efficacy of human and veterinary medicines. Over the years, while NDA has played a key role in safeguarding the public against fake medicines, it will have to play an even bigger role in ensuring safety food.

Because the food industry has been unregulated for a long time, the quality and safety of the food that we consume is not known.
Uganda National Bureau of Standards is supposed to check the quality of products before reaching the shelves, but often times it has reported that it doesn’t have adequate capacity--in terms of manpower and equipment to do so.

Therefore, a lot of consumer goods including packaged foods, or food that is imported from outside the country are rarely checked for safety.
This explains why it is common to find expired goods on sale. This puts the public health at great risk.

Although not much is known about the contribution of food-borne diseases in the country, many will agree that unsafe food is a serious problem that will require a strong oversight from the government.

In other parts of the world, a number of outbreaks of diseases like Salmonella and E. coli have all been linked to produce from lettuce, spinach and peppers.
Government should therefore fast-track this amendment but also keep regular inspection of food on top of its agenda. This will save money that would otherwise be used treat food related illness but also, it will save millions of lives.