The Real Food We Eat: Accra vegetables contaminated with faeces

The Real Food We Eat: Accra vegetables contaminated with faeces

By Justice Lee Adoboe

Street food is usually tasty and most of us have our favourite Wakye, Kelewele, Roasted Plantain or ‘Red-Red’ joint. Apart from the taste, it is convenient to grab something to eat in town when our tummies begin to harass us for attention. We are aware that some of these meals are prepared under questionable conditions. Yet we usually rationalise our desire for them with sayings like ‘the tastiest waste or rice is usually located close to a big gutter or dumpsite’ or ‘African germs are no germs.’

However the food we eat may lead to different life threatening diseases.  A study has shown that vegetables grown in Accra, Ghana’s capital, is laden with pathogens from fecal matter and other harmful sources. The contamination is caused by exposure to bacteria and poor handling of the crops from the farm to the processing stage by food vendors.

The study titled “Wastewater Irrigation on Salad crops in Ghana: Are Producers and Consumers at Risk?” was carried out by Prince Antwi-Agyei a student of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine– LSHTM,

It established that majority of the gardeners in Accra use waste water to irrigate their crops due to the lack of clean water in the areas under study.

The researcher Antwi Adjei  said the study was conducted to assess the risk of faecal disease transmission (diarrhoea and helminthes infections) in the occupational, public and domestic domains and to influence policy action for the safe use of waste water and excreta in Agriculture in Ghana.

Waste water from Accra drains are not safe because the drains serve as receptacles for faecal matter and other waste materials generated by various human activities such as food preparation and slaughtering of animals.

The report indicated that   “The major source of the health hazards identified in  this practice is the use of waste water into which  people dump faecal matter,”

This unhealthy agriculture practice goes on in the city in spite of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly(AMA)’s by-laws which forbid irrigation of crops with waste water. “No crops shall be watered or irrigated by the effluent from a drain from any premises or any surface water from a drain which is fed by water from a street drainage.” says the AMA bye-law on irrigation.-LOCAL Government Bulletin, 1995.

The study employed qualitative and semi-quantitative risk analysis including behaviour observations and exposure patterns, to establish that  the annual exposure time to faecal contamination on farms was about198 days..

Samples were taken from farms located around Dzorwulu, Marine-Drive, Independence Square, Korle-Bu and Abelenpke.

It was also revealed that 98.8 percent of the soil used is contaminated by poultry manure and 58 percent of the farmers practice open defecation on their farms.

The presence of excreta-related pathogens, skin irritants and chemicals, in the vegetables  was therefore established through analyses carried out  at laboratories in Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (University of Ghana, Legon) and Water Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research     (CSIR).

The health risks established by the research include infections and diarrhoea diseases (bacterial and viral infections) and skin diseases.

According to the report, 6.67 percent of farm soil is contaminated with hookworms and 9.09 percent of farm raw produce contaminated with Strongyloides or roundworms. These worms can enter the body through exposed skin such as bare feet.

    The report also showed that 86.1 percent of irrigated water was contaminated beyond World Health Organization (WHO) threshold level of 1000 E.coli per every 100ml of waste water.

  1. coliis the name of a germ, that lives in thedigestive tracts  of humans and animals.

There are many types of E. coli, and most of them are harmless. But some can cause bloody diarrhoea. In some people, this type of E. coli may also cause severe anemia or kidney failure, which can lead to death. Other strains of E. coli can cause urinary tract infections or other infections.

One gets an E. coli infection by coming into contact with the feaces, or stool, of humans or animals. This can happen when you drink water or eat food that has been contaminated by feaces. E. coli can also get into meat during processing. If the infected meat is not cooked to160°F (71°C), the bacteria can survive and infect you when you eat the meat.

Beside the risks associated with the cultivation process, the post-farm handling of the produce is very worrying. These include the display of vegetables on bare market floor and the proximity of vending sites to uncollected refuse & uncovered choked drains. Such practices are a major source of vegetable contamination in our markets because of exposure to dust from the non concreted floors as well as from roads and refuse dumps which carry pathogens.

This also happens in spite of AMA bye-laws forbidding the display of foodstuffs in a manner that exposes them to contamination.

The report revealed that 32.5% of vendors sell produce without washing them and that there was no significant difference in contamination levels of produce at farms and markets. However higher levels of contamination was discovered in cooked food sold along the street as well as in restaurants and hotels. There was also a higher concentration in samples of cooked food taken with bare hand as compared to spatula/spoon or plastic wrap.

.   Worst of all, the study also established that prepared food sold along the streets of the city and in hotels and restaurant was also unsafe as the vegetables used in their preparation were not properly treated.

High cost of waste water treatment; very low coverage, poor management and performance failures (of treatment systems) in most developing countries; and limited access to potable water and freshwater resources are some of the reasons given for the use of waste water by these urban vegetable growers.

Director of the Sanitation Directorate at the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Demedeme Naa Linasun,  commented that the challenge was mainly with the lack of infrastructure to cater for liquid waste in the capital.

He added that the city authorities were also not able to implement their bye-laws since irrigation facilities were non-existent for urban agriculture.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA), Ben Nyamadi conceded that irrigation facilities in the city were woefully inadequate.

He put this situation down to the country’s low investment in irrigation and lack of action on the part of city authorities.

We are all at risk so it is important that more attention will be directed to training and monitoring urban farmers and food vendors to ensure that they adopt good practices in all stages of food preparation before it reaches the consumer.

This feature was put together in 2014 based on  a study carried out by Prince Antwi-Agyei a student of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine– LSHTM, and with support from WaterAid Ghana (WAG)