Dakar, Dec 19 (APS) – Representatives of the oilseed, milling and salt industries, as well as experts, began a consultation workshop on Tuesday in Dakar on the management and protection of the “ENRICHI” logo, affixed to the packaging of fortified foods, the APS found.
This meeting between as part of the fight against micronutrient deficiencies in West Africa.
Lasting three days, it is initiated by the Association of Industrialists in the Oilseed Sector of UEMOA and ECOWAS (AIFO-UEMOA-ECOWAS), in partnership with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and German cooperation (GIZ).
This workshop is organized as part of the Large-Scale Food Fortification (LSFF) project in West Africa.
The project launched in September 2022 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, aims to increase the coverage of consumers of fortified products to more than 70% in West African countries.
The “ENRICHI” logo, affixed to the packaging of fortified foods, plays the central role in the initiative to guarantee the quality and visibility of fortified products.
“The issue of vitamin and micronutrient deficiencies constitutes a public health problem. “It is a question today of seeing how to ensure that the ‘enriched’ logo is the subject of regional recognition, that it is accepted as a label for the identification of enriched products”, maintained the president of the Senegalese Committee for the Fortification of Foods with Micronutrients (COSFAM), Amadou Sall Dial.
He spoke at the opening ceremony of a consultation workshop on the management and protection of the “ENRICHI” logo, organized by the Association of Industrialists in the Oilseed Sector of UEMOA and ECOWAS (AIFO-UEMOA- ECOWAS), in partnership with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and GIZ.
Mr. Sall indicated that this workshop aims to “find ways and means to make it a unique regional logo, which will be the first distinctive mark for control operations, but which will allow populations to make better discernment”.
“We can say that Senegal is among the countries that are most advanced in the management of deficiencies. Today, here, we have anemia rates of more than 51% of the population of women of childbearing age,” revealed Mr. Dial, also director of the Senegal industrial group.
“We have identical statistics for a certain number of countries. Senegal took action very early, since 2009. We made a lot of efforts and there were many branches that were involved,” he said.
“In our region, there are a certain number of good practices which are underway in Senegal and which have been transposed to other countries. They also allow us to maintain hope regarding the imminent eradication of these various deficiencies at the country level,” argued Amadou Sall Dial.
“Our role is to go in the direction of calling on everyone who might be reluctant about the use of the logo, but beyond that, the fortification in itself and also to promote it for adoption of the logo by industrialists in its sectors,” argued the representative of the executive office of the association of industrialists in the West African oilseed sector (AIFO) and ECOWAS, El Hadj Dane Diagne.
“It is in the interest, today, of all manufacturers, whether the oilseed, salt and milling sectors, to adopt this ‘enriched’ logo, because not only does it contribute to their contribution to health food and also the quality of their products,” added Mr. Diagne, general director of the National Oilseed Marketing Company of Senegal (SONACOS),
“As soon as this logo is adopted, we will have a popularization plan and a plan to promote its adoption, because there are many obstacles that go beyond industries,” he said.
ID/SKS/ASB/MTN
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