NAFDAC states reason for imposing ban on Noddles

The National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control, or NAFDAC, announced that it will start randomly sampling Indomie noodles from the manufacturing facilities, including the seasoning.

Indomie noodles were recently recalled by Malaysian and Taiwanese officials after ethylene oxide, a cancer-causing chemical, was found in them.

The agency’s Director-General, Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, announced this in a statement and identified the component of concern as ethylene oxide. She said that the Director of the Food Lab Services Directorate has already been engaged and is working on the analysis methodology.

Adeyeye said; “Indomie noodles have been banned from being imported into the country for many years. It is one of the foods on the government prohibition list. It is not allowed in Nigeria, and therefore not registered by NAFDAC.

“What we are doing is an extra caution to ensure that the product is not smuggled in, and if so, our post-marketing surveillance would detect it. We also want to be sure that the spices used for the Indomie and other noodles in Nigeria are tested.

“That is what NAFDAC Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, FSAN, and Post Marketing Surveillance, PMS, are doing this week at the production facilities and in the market, respectively.”

She did, however, guarantee that Nigerians would be properly informed of the investigation’s findings.

Ethylene oxide is a colorless, highly reactive, and combustible gas that is frequently employed as an intermediary in the synthesis of a variety of chemicals, according to the World Health Organization, or WHO.

The World Health Organization indicated in a report that evidence from studies on animals, test systems, and epidemiological findings suggested a rise in the incidence of human cancer.

The report’s conclusion states that ethylene oxide should be regarded as a likely human carcinogen and that its environmental concentrations should be kept as low as practical.