The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has responded to a media report on the non-establishment of testing laboratory for fortification by the agency, which was said to have been made at the Nigeria Economic Summit Group in collaboration with the Civil Society Legislative Advisory Centre (CSLAC) and eHealth.
In a statement on Monday, NAFDAC’s Director General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye said: “I wish to state here that NAFDAC do not and had never contracted the analyses of its micronutrients or any parameter of it regulated products to private laboratory since my assumption of office as the Director General”.
She said that the agency has “laboratories for analyses of micronutrients in food and had been conducting annual survey on food fortification in Nigeria for the past years. Particularly, the Central Food Laboratory has international accredited micronutrient laboratory units with the state-of-the-art equipment”.
Adeyeye further said: “The laboratory has the vitamins units for testing of vitamins in food which include Vitamin premix and fortified food vehicles. Vitamins tested include fat soluble – Vitamin A; water soluble – thiamine, riboflavin, biotin, pyridoxine hydrochloride, cyanocobalamin, folate. This unit is equipped with latest versions of Agilent and Chromaster brands of High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC).
“The laboratory has the metal unit equipped with latest models of Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS), Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectrometer (ICP-OES), Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS). The metal unit analyses all the nutritional and heavy toxic metals in food including the fortification vehicles.
“These units have well trained staff that are technically equipped to handle these equipment in the analyses of micronutrients using internationally accepted protocols. The test scopes of these units are accredited by American National Accreditation Board (ANAB) since 2018 and this has been sustained and renewed annually. This fact can be verified from the ANAB website.
“In addition, the laboratory along with other NAFDAC laboratories in other parts of the country handled over 10,000 samples of fortified food in the 2023 Food fortification survey. The result of these samples was presented to the National Fortification Alliance (NFA).
“The NFA consist of representatives of the industries – Flourmills, Sugar processing, Vegetable oil,etc., government and regulatory agencies, and donor partners”.
