The National Agency for Foods, Drugs Administration and Control yesterday announced two newly gazetted reviewed regulation known as Fats, Oil and Food Containing Fats and Oil Regulation 2022, and the Pre-Packaged Food Labelling Regulation 2022.
NAFDAC Director-General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, in a statement, said this implied that the 2005 versions of the two regulations stood as repealed regulations without jeopardy from whatever was purportedly done in the spirit of the old versions.
She said the new regulation had addressed the second pathway for elimination of industrially iTFAs with the limit of not more than 2% (0.02ppm) of the total fats in a fat, oil and food containing fats and oil products as recommended by the World Health Organisation.
She said the Pre-packaged Food Labelling Regulation 2005 had also been reviewed to take care of the labelling requirement for trans-fats.
She said WHO statistics indicated that non-communicable diseases, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung disease, are collectively responsible for 74 percent of all deaths worldwide.
According to her, in real terms, over 36 million people die annually from non-communicable diseases. “Among these, cardiovascular diseases are the number one cause of death, accounting for 17.5 million deaths annually.”
She recalled that at the 2018 World Health Assembly in Geneva, the WHO had advised countries to eliminate industrially-produced trans fats, trans fatty acid, from global food supplies.
