Consumer Awareness on Food Adulteration Practices on the Market and its Challenges

Abstract

Food adulteration has been a problem since the dawn of civilization because it not only lowers the quality of food but also has various negative health impacts. Value evaluation and ensuring consumer protection from fraudulent activities both involve authentic testing of food and adulteration detection of various food products. This study examined consumer’s awareness of food adulteration practices on the market and its challenges. The study sampled 240 shoppers at the Takoradi main in Ghana. The study revealed that though food adulteration has received a lot of media attention, most consumers still lacked a lot of knowledge on what constitutes an adulterant and how to detect it at the household level. Various adulteration practices such as poor handling and packaging of fresh products, excessive use of artificial flavouring and colouring substances, misuse of food additives among others were found to be very common on the market. Challenges of food adulteration such as the lack of adequate technology to detect adulterants in food as well as consumers awareness of procedures to lodge complaints pertaining adulteration were also found. Consumers and food regulatory agencies were hence admonished to ensure that the necessary protocols are followed whenever issues concerning food adulteration occurs.