Dyed, diluted, disguised: Is Ghana’s market safe to shop?
From palm oil laced with a banned dye to peanut butter stretched with flour, Ghana must confront the questions surrounding the authenticity and safety of everyday food and explain why the consequences are so hard to see.
Every day, millions of Ghanaians visit markets, roadside stalls and neighbourhood shops for the ingredients that sustain their households: palm oil for soup, groundnuts for the stew, spices for flavour, grains for the family pot. Most do so with a simple expectation, that what they are paying for is genuine, safe and fit to eat.
That expectation should never be too much to ask. Yet it increasingly feels like a leap of faith.
What the record shows
In April 2026, the Food and Drugs Authority’s (FDA) Eastern Regional Office announced that 12 of 76 palm oil samples tested in its annual surveillance exercise had failed. The cause was Sudan IV, an industrial dye banned from food, allegedly used to deepen the oil’s red colour and make it more attractive to buyers. Twelve suspected traders were arrested or are assisting police, including five at the Koforidua Central Market and seven in Nkawkaw, Asamankese and the Kwaebibirem District. The FDA warned that the dye can cause cancer, liver damage and kidney disease.
It is not the only case. In July, the FDA closed 44 food facilities, among them sachet water producers and cold stores, most reportedly operating without licences, some making food outside the approval process and others in unhygienic conditions. In August, the Authority acknowledged that agrochemicals were being sold in small quantities to traders to force-ripen plantain and other fruit. In October, at Mallam Atta Market in Accra, it named peanut butter adulterated with flour and coconut oil and corn and cassava dough containing yeast.
None of this is new. In August 2023, the FDA warned food-chain operators against adulterating food and ingredients to deceive buyers and maximise profit, with market participants raising concerns about palm oil, groundnut paste, corn dough and meat. Three years later, we are still issuing warnings.
Rising, or only now noticed?
Honesty requires a caveat. Without reliable trend data, it would be premature to say adulteration is rising across every commodity and region. More inspections and more media coverage can make a steady problem look like a growing one.
That caveat is no comfort. If we cannot say whether the problem is growing, it is because nobody is measuring it well enough to tell. Documented incidents show the risk is real, and consumer protection requires more than occasional warnings.
A crime you cannot see
Food fraud is especially troubling because the victim cannot detect it. A shopper cannot tell by looking whether palm oil carries an industrial dye, whether groundnut paste has been padded or whether the dough has been quietly doctored. Appearance, familiarity and trust are all the buyer has, and those are exactly what the fraudster exploits.
Dye makes poor palm oil look rich. Flour and cheaper oil make a jar of peanut butter go further. Carbide makes plantain ripen on the trader’s schedule instead of natures’. Each shortcut cuts a cost or speeds up a sale, and the person who pays is the one who cannot see it.
The honest trader pays too
There is an economic injustice here that rarely gets attention. A dishonest seller who makes an inferior product look attractive gains an edge over the trader who follows the rules. When trust collapses, honest traders and producers suffer with the cheats. Food fraud harms public health and legitimate business at once.
It also lands hardest on those with the least room to manoeuvre. The Food and drug Authority (FDA) itself advises the public to be wary of unusually low prices, which can signal that licensing and testing costs were skipped. It is sound advice, but in a country where healthy food is already out of reach for many households, the low price is often the only one a family can afford. The household choosing the cheaper tin is not being careless. It is being squeezed.
Where enforcement falls short
Here is what should bother us more than any single dye. When The Ghanaian Chronicle asked the FDA in August whether anyone had actually been sanctioned over the fruit-ripening chemicals, the Deputy CEO could not give details, saying records would have to be retrieved and that “sanctions come in different forms.” A regulator that cannot readily say who was punished is a regulator whose deterrent is hard to see, and cheats are very good at noticing what is hard to see.
Critics also point to a structural weakness. One commentary argued that approval rests largely on pre-market samples, with little systematic testing of what is on sale afterward, and with responsibility split between the FDA and the Ghana Standards Authority. That is one writer’s assessment, not an audit, but it describes a gap worth taking seriously. A product can pass as a sample and still fail as a purchase.
Enforcement must also go beyond the stall. Investigators should establish where the substances came from, who supplied them, how they entered the market and who else is involved. Arresting the trader at the end of the chain while the supplier at the beginning goes untouched is not enforcement. It is a photo opportunity.
Education is not enforcement
The Food and Drug Authority (FDA)’s public education work deserves credit. At Mallam Atta Market in October, it engaged traders on adulteration, handling practices and food poisoning, and the market’s queen pledged to rally other foodstuff queens against the practice. But the FDA chose that market partly because it recorded a 100 per cent pass rate in Sudan dye screening in 2025. Good news, certainly. A clean result in one market tells us little about thousands of others, and a country cannot be reassured by its best-behaved stall.
Education cannot substitute for enforcement, and responsibility cannot rest on consumers and market women alone. Regulators should also distinguish between deliberate fraud, unsafe handling and accidental contamination, because each calls for a different response.
Consumers have a part to play. we should strive to buy from reputable sellers, read labels, report suspicious products. But they also need clear guidance. Not every unusual colour or texture proves adulteration. The FDA has suggested a simple glass-of-water test for dyed palm oil, but home checks can offer false reassurance, and a food safety system should never depend on a shopper acting as a chemist.
Going Forward…
- Regulators must test what is on the shelf, not just the sample. Regulators should Make routine post-market surveillance the rule and publish the results.
- Publish the consequences. Name the offences, penalties and outcomes. A deterrent nobody can see is not a deterrent.
- Follow the supply chain. Trace chemicals, dyes and substitutes to their source, not just to the stall.
- Fund the labs. Testing capacity outside Accra cannot be an afterthought.
- Clarify who is responsible. The FDA, the Ghana Standards Authority, local assemblies and the police should work to one clear division of labour the public can understand.
- Make reporting easy and safe. Consumers and honest traders should be able to report suspected adulteration quickly, confidentially and without fear, and see follow-up.
Food is not an ordinary commodity. It enters our bodies, sustains our families and shapes our health, and the standards governing it must reflect that. The right to safe food has to mean more than regulations on paper. It has to show up in what we buy, in how inspections work and in what happens to those who deliberately endanger consumers.
Ghanaians should not have to become food detectives just to protect their families. The responsibility for keeping adulterated food off our tables belongs first to those who produce and sell it, and to the institutions entrusted with enforcing the law.
By Hannah Agyemang
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