{"id":6615,"date":"2019-11-18T08:48:25","date_gmt":"2019-11-18T05:48:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=6615"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:30:41","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:30:41","slug":"a-toxic-country-from-breakfast-to-dinner-we-eat-dangerous-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2019\/11\/18\/a-toxic-country-from-breakfast-to-dinner-we-eat-dangerous-food\/","title":{"rendered":"A Toxic Country: From Breakfast To Dinner, We Eat Dangerous Food"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>By Allan Mungai&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A week ago, the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) banned the\nsale of five brands of maize flour due to high aflatoxin levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A Twitter user shared a picture of his meal \u2013 ugali with\nbeef.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A fellow user replied, \u201caflatoxin with a dash of sodium\nmetabisulphite. Fine day for science\u201d and amid laughter and applause, the tweet\nwas retweeted about 1,500 times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kenyans are a people that draw laughter from the grimmest of\nsituations but even laughter can no&nbsp;longer&nbsp;mask the nation\u2019s\nfrustration with the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As Kenyans were coming to terms with the realisation that\nwe&nbsp;may&nbsp;have been consuming poisonous levels of aflatoxin and sodium\nmetabisulphite \u2013 an agent used in the preservation of meat \u2013 two agencies\nmandated with checking the quality of medicines were squabbling over their\nroles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Enforce the quality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The National Quality Control Laboratory and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board, two complementary agencies responsible for the safety of pharmaceuticals in Kenya are embroiled in a supremacy battle that threatens to endanger the lives of Kenyans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The squabbles could give leeway to the entry of unregistered, counterfeit or substandard drugs and medicine into the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Kenya, death is dispensed at the supermarket shelves,\ngroceries and pharmacies because the institutions charged with ensuring quality\nchecks are not effectively performing their roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Kebs has been in a spot over the sale of substandard and\npotentially unsafe products despite having the mandate to enforce quality\nstandards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cWhat exactly does a Kebs standardisation mark mean because\nit doesn\u2019t actually mean \u201csafe\u201d, one Kenyan pondered on Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.standardmedia.co.ke\/health\/article\/2001349685\/a-toxic-country-from-breakfast-to-dinner-we-eat-dangerous-food\">Read\nmore\u2026<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Allan Mungai&nbsp; A week ago, the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) banned the sale of five brands of maize flour due to high aflatoxin levels. A Twitter user shared&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6616,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}