Farmers, small and medium-scale food handlers and processors in Nigeria have been urged to embrace good agricultural and post-harvest food practices to avert preventable morbidity and deaths associated with related diseases and poisoning.
Food post-harvest specialists lamented the use of chemicals to ripen fruits, use of insecticides on smoked fish, washing of fruits with unclean water, application of unapproved chemicals on beans to prevent pests, and use of detergents in cassava bye-products such as fufu, describing such practices as capable of jeopardizing public health.
A research finding published in the Journal of Public Health and Epidemiology, entitled, ‘Knowledge of food borne infection and food safety practices among local food handlers in Ijebu-Ode Local Government Area of Ogun State,’ by Oladoyinbo Catherine Adebukola and others, stated that estimated 47.8 million, two million and 750,000 people in the United States, United Kingdom and France, respectively, become ill as a result of consumption of food containing pathogens or disease causing substances.
Source: guardian.ng
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