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{
    "id": 1278513,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1278513/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 232,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr) James Nyikal",
    "speaker": null,
    "content": "You can have long-term health effects depending on the type of food you eat. There are foods associated with cancers. You can have that. Things like cancer of the oesophagus and cancer of the liver have been associated with the kind of food we eat and the contamination in foods. What about feeds? Feeds given to animals are an important part of the food chain. It gets into animals and we eat their products. Again, that is extremely important. As I said, if you have things like aflatoxin in food, you will get cancer of the liver. It is important that we get this right. Sometimes, food can be contaminated when it is being produced. Food can be contaminated at the time of production and that is where fertilisers feature. What is the effect of the fertilisers we use? When we use pest control chemicals, what is their impact on the food we eat? What do we put in feeds? We know of feeds energised with steroids so that chicken may grow faster. They pass this onto us. All processing and storage of foods is associated with chemicals or other things that make food dangerous to our health. Transportation of food is also extremely important. I support this Bill because if you look at all those areas from production of food in farms to the fork in our mouths, chances of contamination are numerous. We then have very many institutions in ministries involved. This Bill seeks to coordinate all those institutions. That is extremely important because, as it is now, each one of them like the Kenya Bureau of Standards and the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service are doing their own things. Nobody brings them together to check even the duplication that occurs. This Bill seeks to bring in coordination and establishes the structure called the Office of Food and Feed Safety Controller. It is extremely important. It also puts in place processes for traceability. If there is food contamination from a factory, can we trace where it came from? Can we also trace where it has been distributed? Can we go to supermarkets that have it? That is so that you can have a recall system. We will know where food was produced and distributed if there is an outbreak. Can we recall that food? Can we follow up the process to that factory and find out what went wrong? Can we trace it to the farm involved and find out what went wrong? This can only be done through very many competent authorities. Here we have ten of them. They are listed in the First Schedule of this Bill - from ministries responsible for public health, the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, the Ministry responsible for fisheries, the Agriculture and Food Authority (AFA), the Kenya Dairy Board, the Kenya Plant and Health Inspectorate, the PCPB, and those that deal with fertiliser. All these are working independently. During the discussion we had with them, we discovered they are working in silos. However, we live in a comprehensive manner. For the food in your house, it does not matter which authority is responsible for controlling food types. You just want to know that your food is safe. It is good to have somebody that is controlling them. Again, I support this Bill because, in the Schedules, it states what also needs to be amended. Currently, there are about 13 Acts of Parliament concerning the matter at hand. It would be futile to do this without going deeper and looking at all those 13 Acts of Parliament, and amending them. Examples are the Public Health Act, the Food Drugs and Chemical Substances Act, the Dairy Industries Act, the Fertilisers and Animal Feeds Safety Act, the Pest Control Act, the Meat Control Act, the Standards Act, the Biosafety Act, the Water Act, and so on. They need to be coordinated. This Bill seeks to do that because it proposes to put in place structures that can help us do that. I only hope we will manage when we get the Office of Food and Feed Safety Controller. The Bill has even put down how to appoint this person. It has stated the qualifications and structure of the office. When it is finally set up, I hope this office will do what it is supposed to do. The most important thing we must look at is that there should never be competition between this office and the various competent authorities. We do not expect this office to go out and start picking food from industries and checking them - that is not their duty. Their duty is to find out whether KEBS is doing what it is supposed to do. Is KEPHIS doing what it is The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}