Some agricultural food exports from Nigeria have been suspended by the European Union (EU).

The food items banned from Europe till June 2016 are beans, sesame seeds, melon seeds, dried fish and meat, peanut chips and palm oil. The European Food Safety Authority had said that the rejected beans were found to contain between 0.03mg per kilogramme to 4.6mg/kg of dichlorvos pesticide, when the acceptable maximum residue limit is 0.01mg/kg.

Senator Joshua Lidani (PDP-Gombe South) who has raised alarm over the health implication of the consumption of foods containing a high concentration of pesticide among Nigerians with newsmen on Monday in Abuja  therefore, called on regulatory agencies in the country to rise up to the occasion and save Nigerians from the dangers of consuming foods containing unacceptable levels of chemicals.

“The EU ban should not have come as a surprise to us because they have very rigorous standards of checking food import especially with the shift towards organic foods. “Unfortunately we do not have similar standards in Nigeria especially as it affects the food we consume.

“We do not have standards of determining whether the foods we consume are noxious; whether they have chemicals that are harmful “NAFDAC and Standards Organisation of Nigeria are supposed to regulate but there is a limit to what they can do. “We are yet to realize the enormity of the problem; so unless we look into the effects of these harmful substances, we may end up having a population that is threatened by diseases such as cancer…”

Read More: vanguardngr