The University of Cape Coast (UCC) has inaugurated the Africa Centre for Food Integrity (AFIC) to address food safety and quality challenges in Ghana and Africa.
The centre seeks to research and develop mobile digital technologies enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) to assess the quality of food in real-time to strengthen food quality assurance and protect food systems against deliberate contamination and food fraud.
Established by the College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences (CANS), the hub will collaborate with key stakeholders, including the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), the Ghana Standards Authority, farmers and other universities, to protect public health, safeguard livelihoods and strengthen trust in food trade.
Food fraud is the deliberate adulteration or misrepresentation of food often for financial gain, potentially endangering public health.
In Ghana, for instance, some food fraud activities include adulterating palm oil with Sudan IV dye, mixing ginger powder with sawdust, combining cola nuts with powdered pepper, and adding flour to groundnut paste while presenting the products as pure or organic.
In this regard, the AFIC is already developing AI-powered technologies that would mimic the five human sense organs namely ear, nose, tongue, eye and skin to authenticate food safety and quality.
Reverend Professor Ernest Teye, Agri-Food Integrity expert and Centre Lead, explained that the centre was conceived some nine years ago in response to concerns about endemic food contamination, adulteration and food fraud in parts of Africa.
He said the canker was difficult to fight especially with the cumbersome and time-consuming conventional food-testing methods, prompting the development of more advanced technologies.
With the introduction of a mobile-enabled spectroscopic device, for instance, the centre is now able to assess the safety and quality of palm oil within seconds instead of days or weeks.
Prof. Teye announced that the centre had developed a cocoa passport system to trace cocoa beans to their place of production and was also preparing to introduce Spice Check, a technology to authenticate spices consumed in Ghana.
Beyond technology development, he indicated that the centre would also educate consumers about food fraud, particularly the importance of checking food labels and verifying product safety.
He said the AFIC’s ultimate goal was to ensure that food consumed by the public was safe, authentic and sustainable, thereby protecting public health and supporting sustainable development.
“All the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will go nowhere if we cannot have a sustainable food system because food is the foundation of every SDG and so we must look at food first,” he stressed.
Source:Fiilafmonline/CitiNews
