By Biola Lawal
Abuja (Flowerbudnews): The National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) has achieved total domestication of the analyses of micronutrients in food and in other parameters of regulated products.

Prof. Mojisola Christiana Adeyeye, the NAFDAC Director General, who disclosed this in a press briefing on Monday in Abuja said that since she assumed office as NAFDAC Chief Executive Officer, the agency had never contracted out such analysis..

”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,” Prof Adeyeye declared.

The NAFDAC Boss was reacting to a news story by Flowerbud NEWS on a reported non-establishment of testing laboratory for fortification by the Agency.

The NAFDAC Boss declared further, ‘:I wish to state unequivocally that NAFDAC has laboratories for analyses of micronutrients in food and had been conducting annual survey on food fortification in Nigeria for the past years”.

Prof Adeyeye stated that in Particular, NAFDAC Central Food Laboratory had international accredited micronutrient laboratory units with the state-of-the-art equipment.

The NAFDAC Boss stated;

”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” .

Prof. Adeyeye disclosed that 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.

She said that the result of the 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. (Flowerbudnews)