Flour brands will now be ranked according to their compliance with a newly launched fortification index, millers announced yesterday.
Brands with sufficient fortification will be ranked higher in the Kenya Millers Fortification Index (KMFI) index than the ones with less fortified nutrients
This follows an initiative by the Cereal Millers Association and international non-profit organisation, TechnoServe.
It aims to facilitate and strengthen the commitment of leading flour millers towards providing consumers with greater access to nutritious and sufficiently fortified food products, with the intention of scaling the initiative to include other staple foods.
This will be achieved through participation in a self-regulatory and award scheme, where they can place improved nutrition at the core of their brand-building efforts.
Additionally, the information gained from emerging performance trends and analysis will provide effective data for policymaking and further inform the design of impactful nutrition related interventions driven by the private sector.
“We'd like to see the regulators get involved, we'd like the consumers to get involved and start demanding for more nutritious food and I think these are the ways that we can really scale up fortification and the KMFI.” said CMA chief executive Paloma Fernandes.
The final scores on the index are based on a self-evaluation tool, industry insights provided by an independent expert group, and product quality testing assessing fortification and aflatoxin levels against national standards.
A 2022 report by TechnoServe showed that at least 70 per cent of maize flour in Kenya is now fortified with three of the mandated micronutrients, similarly, fortification levels for wheat flour jumped from 28 per cent in 2018 to 49 percent.
In 2012, fortification standards were set, and legislation was passed making it mandatory for the fortification of maize, wheat, and oil.
Speaking during the first Annual Kenya Food Processing and Nutrition Leadership (CEO) Forum, TechnoServe Country director Kris Ansin said they are working with CMA millers to bolster industry compliance to meet mandatory national standards of fortification,
The forum brought together stakeholders from the private sector, government, and civil society to highlight the role of millers in supporting nutrition, address shared challenges, and officially launch the Kenya Millers Fortification Index (KMFI).
“It is critical in this time of drought, this time of food insecurity to be thinking about brands you can trust, who are putting nutrition, malnutrition, and food security in the core of what they do as a business,” said Ansin.
According to the Kenya Demographic Health Survey (KDHS, 2022), fortification efforts have seen prevalence of stunting reduce from 26 percent in 2014 to 18 percent in 2022.
However, 18% of children under age 5 are still stunted, or too short for their age. This is a sign of chronic undernutrition.
In addition, 32 percent of children are anemic, posing a threat to their learning abilities and increasing risk of infections due to a compromised immunity.