Welcome from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture to the Workshop on Mycotoxins in Foods in Africa
Opening address
Opening address
P. Neuenschwander
Director, Plant Health Management Division,
IITA, Benin
Your Excellency, Minister of Health, Madame Véronique Lawson; Your Excellency, Minister of Rural Development, Mr. Mama Adamou Ndiaye; Dr. Ole Filtenborg, representing Danida; ladies and gentlemen; dear colleagues.
Mycotoxins in food in Africa
Mycotoxins, like aflatoxin, and recently others, have been recognized as an important public health hazard. Why would an institution like IITA, where the 'A' stands for agriculture, participate in a workshop concerning a public health issue, apart from offering the conference facilities? There are indeed very compelling reasons, which I would like to outline.
To alleviate the problems caused by mycotoxins, it is not just enough to treat the afflicted patients. We need to find lasting solutions to prevent the problems in the first place. These solutions have to be found in the way we produce and store food crops that are the basis of this problem. Thus, solutions have to come from agriculture, and they have to be found also for the people of the tropics, not only for those in Europe and America, where aflatoxins are closely monitored. Moreover, the problem is such that lasting solutions can probably only be found through close international cooperation. In conclusion, IITA is implicated in these studies and their implementation with all its letters!
Aflatoxin has been recognized as a food poison and carcinogen for about twenty years. Yet no lasting solutions (apart from sanitation) have been found in industrialized countries which often are also important food exporters. IITA's clients are the small-scale farmers of tropical Africa. Controlling and policing food production under these conditions is very difficult. It is therefore most likely that the solutions to mycotoxin problems to be found for and with these farmers will be substantially different from those being implemented abroad.
Recognizing and publicizing the problem will be a contribution in itself. This will alert breeders to the dangers of mycotoxins, forcing them to introduce tests for mycotoxin susceptibility into their breeding programs. Thus, an inadvertent increase in susceptibility to aflatoxin in higher yielding varieties would be avoided. IITA's Plant Health Management Division (PHMD) has a program where scientists work with breeders on host plant resistance. We certainly shall alert our colleagues about the outcome of this workshop.
Most contributions to a solution to mycotoxin production in our farming systems will come in the first place from proper habitat management. This is the domain of the second program of PHMD.
Recent studies suggest that the fungi responsible for mycotoxin production, e.g. Aspergillus, can be controlled through biological control, the subject of the third PHMD program. In this program, our colleagues work in classical biological control utilizing organisms of higher trophic levels which feed on the target pest. We are well aware that biological control in fungi is more a question of niche occupancy and competitive displacement than of predatory feeding. In the biological control program we also have a project using the fungus Metarhizium flavoviride. Many of the problems of producing, storing, applying and monitoring non-toxic strains of Aspergillus have been tackled also for Metarhizium, and I am sure there will be good synergism between the two projects.
Finally, PHMD has its own technology testing and training unit which, under the umbrella of the International Cooperation Division of IITA, assures professional linkages and collaboration with the national programs as equal partners. We are just now renegotiating a three year extension for this unit and hope that its expertise in working with national programs will be also used in mycotoxin work by IITA scientists and by those from the organizations present at this symposium.
I hope I have demonstrated that IITA has skills and comparative advantages that will make it a valid partner in collaboration with the assembled sixteen or so organizations, from whom we hope to learn much.
So much for IITA's scientific involvement. We would also like to assure your well-being here in Cotonou. If there are hitches, and there will certainly be some, we ask for your patience and indulgence. Please bring your concerns to the attention of the organizers. Raffael de Santos will assist you throughout the workshop. Otherwise, Stanislas Hacheme, Jacob Quaye and, particularly, Kitty Cardwell, our scientist in charge of mycotoxin research, will be available for problem-solving.
I thank you for having come all the way to Cotonou and the confidence you manifested in IITA by doing so, and hope you will have fruitful discussions. I particularly thank Danida for sponsoring the workshop and hope you will all be satisfied with the outcome, which should translate into implementable research results and, eventually, better rural welfare.
Thank you.
Dr. Véronique Lawson
Minister of Health
Republic of Benin
The Minister for Rural Development; the representative of United Nations International Children Fund; the Director of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture; the representatives of United Nations Organizations; resource personnel; the participants; honorable guests; ladies and gentlemen.
It is a great pleasure to share with you all this moment which has great significance in the development process. Mycotoxins cause worrying symptoms in the plant and animal kingdom. Specifically, the consumption of foodstuffs deteriorated by these substances leads to morbid symptoms like immunity deficiencies, kwashiorkor, hepatitis, cancer of the liver, and so on. You will therefore all agree that mycotoxins are one of the sources of several public health problems.
A prerequisite for control of the destructive effects of these substances is a thorough knowledge of the means by which their production will be hindered, and if possible eliminated. This knowledge is gained through research. For this reason, close multidisciplinary collaboration is indispensable. That is the relevance of this gathering which brings together specialists from the North and the South to share and exchange experience.
I am seizing this opportunity to congratulate the organizers of this seminar and also to let them know that the Ministry of Health and executive staff are ready to work with their agricultural counterparts with a view to reducing any problem related to mycotoxins in foods.
The Ministry of Health is anxious to know about the resolution and action plans that you will adopt at the end of your meeting. I am convinced that you will come up with a realistic and directly applicable agenda in the field of research, information, education and extension.
With these words of hope, allow me to conclude by wishing you success in your deliberations.
Thank you all.
Dr. M. A. Ndiaye
The Minister of Rural Development.
Republic of Benin
The Minister of Health; representatives of international organizations; the Director of IITA; the coordinator of the workshop on mycotoxins in foods; honorable scientists; honorable guests; ladies and gentlemen.
At this opening ceremony of the International Workshop on Mycotoxins in Foods, I happily join my colleague, the Minister of Health in welcoming you all to Cotonou, and thank you for honoring our invitation to this workshop.
I would also like to express my gratitude to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture for all their endeavors in the agricultural sector, particularly the Benin station who are hosting us, and whose dynamic role increases from day to day.
My gratitude equally goes to the coordinators for honoring our country by choosing it as the host of this important workshop, whose merit is not just its multidisciplinary foundation but also for having brought together a panel of experts. In that respect allow me to express my satisfaction. Indeed, from questions of human and animal pathology, you will look into the effect of mycotoxins on food products, thereby tackling a problem of major interest to rural and urban areas alike, and the economy of all our countries.
Distinguished delegates, the developed countries have an obsessive fear of our agricultural products due to the potential contamination of these products by mycotoxins. At the same time, this contamination is a great barrier to our economy because it reduces the volume of trade while the role of agriculture as our major source of export is increasingly confirmed. Therefore, we cannot deny the fact that mycotoxins are stumbling blocks to our economic expansion and we must put a stop to their propagation if we do not wish to sign away our development.
Taking the case of Benin in particular, mid-term prospects indicate that agriculture should continue to greatly contribute to realizing the national aim which is economic growth. To achieve this, our agriculture must be exportable and be able to cope with international competition by producing safe products of great nutritional value.
Within this framework, the Ministry of Rural Development decided upon food crop diversification taking into consideration our assets and paying particular attention to maize production. Therefore, Benin has been dedicated to taking every initiative to meet basic production and consumption requirements, particularly with regard to increasing quality, improving commercial and sanitary standards, increasing export capacity, and food and nutritional security.
Honorable scientists, the theme of this workshop, therefore, is an opportunity for Africa as a whole and Benin in particular, for cases of mycotoxin contamination are not unknown in Benin. The control of this contamination remains limited, not only due to insufficient funding, but also due to lack of a framework enabling integration into a broader international context.
The tragedy of aflatoxin is still vivid in the memories of our farmers, especially those in the south who recently had to pay a heavy toll because of contamination of a large quantity of their maize production. How could we have avoided that without an information program for our farmers? Without an effective means of detoxification? Without a proper prevention and continuous monitoring mechanism? I hope this meeting will be able to give practical answers to these questions.
Honorable scientists, dear guests, rural communities, traders, exporters, manufacturers, and consumers, have all been awaiting the workshop that will answer these questions. Several other workshops have come before, which paved the way for deeper reflection. Among others, there was the ACCT Symposium on Practical Toxicology in 1976 in Paris which discussed mycotoxins analysis and regulation problems. There also were joint FAO/WHO/United Nations Environment Program conferences in Nairobi in 1977 and in Bangkok in 1987. Indeed, scientific knowledge on mycotoxins has evolved and many of you contributed to it. I am convinced that this Cotonou workshop, after working on all these scientific discoveries, will bring forth a practical and directly applicable solutions to the problem.
In this practical search for solutions, allow me to invite you to share with me some thoughts on some major guidelines to be followed.
Developing countries should create mycotoxin contamination prevention strategies, while developing continuous and simple supervising systems, control and information techniques for target groups, giving support to institutions involved in implementation of these primary strategies.
Given that rural communities and their urban network will directly benefit from these activities, a short term effect will rapidly be felt. An ad hoc committee can be set up during this workshop in order to develop such programs. Other activities could then be based on this program from which mid- and long-term effects should be evident.
The second category of activities should be directed to a better understanding of mycotoxins, the problems they cause, and related constraints. This could be done through basic research, applied research, standardization, exchange between researchers, extension and control structures. At administrative level, we should try to create a light coordinating committee whose task would be to manage, or steer the various programs, to intensify cooperation among the programs in order to avoid mismanagement of equipment, human and financial resources, and to help coordinated the activities to be undertaken.
I am convinced that you all appreciate the relevance of these ideas and that after your deliberations here this week, you will come up with some realistic and realizable projects, which will alleviate the destructive effects of mycotoxins on our agriculture.
With these words, allow me to wish you the best in your endeavors. I declare the International Workshop on Mycotoxins in Foods in Africa open.
I thank you all.
© 1996 International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA)