The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has assured Nigerians that the poisonous Indomie Noodles implicated in the recalls in Malaysia and Taiwan are not in Nigeria.
Lafiya360 reports that the Agency revealed that its concluded investigations showed that the Indomie in-country are safe for consumption.
The Director General of NAFDAC, Prof Mojisola Adeyeye, according to a statement, disclosed this on Thursday at the MAN House, Ikeja, Lagos during the Quarterly Interactive session between the Agency and the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), where she implored Nigerians to always eat safe.
She said: “I love to eat good food, including noodles. But I want to be sure that the food I am eating is not going to make me sick, take medicine. And if I am taking medicine the food that I am eating will not make me add to the medicine that I am taking. Therefore, I take food very, very seriously.”
She explained that immediately the news of the recalls of Indomie Noodles from Malaysia and Taiwan got to Nigeria she directed the Director, Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Mrs. Eva Edwards, and Director of Laboratory Services (Food), Dr Charles Nwachukwu, respectively to begin tripartite discussions with manufacturers and marketers.
The Director-General disclosed that someone asked her when the results were going to come out, adding that the Agency had run all the necessary tests. “But we needed a chemical standard. It’s all science. We are a science organization, and our processes are science driven. We cannot conduct our own Nigerian science. No. We have to use the international standard chemical agents and things like that.”
She insisted that the implicated foreign noodles are not in Nigeria, hence, the locally produced noodles are safe for human consumption.
The Director-General of MAN, Mr. Segun Ajayi Quadri, in his remarks said: “We shall also be looking for the definitive action on the outstanding memorandum of understanding between NAFDAC and MAN. We remain convinced that the MOU exemplifies the concretization of the cooperation and collaboration that we have built over the years.
“It provides the basis for certainty. It minimizes the use of discretion and becomes a sustainable guarding document in our relationship. This is what our nation needs to work. This shows that you are leading in an example of what public and private partnership should be. We at MAN value the partnership the interactive sessions have engendered.