<<Print>>

The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has cautioned media houses to be circumspect when carrying adverts on their platforms. The acting Deputy Chief Executive in charge of the Food Inspectorate Division of the FDA, Mrs Isabella Mansa Agra, who gave the caution, asked all media houses to insist on an approval letter of the FDA from their clients before carrying adverts on cosmetics, drinks and drugs. She gave the caution when the FDA, in collaboration with the Advertisers Association of Ghana, organised a sensitisation workshop for journalist in Accra last Monday. The seminar was to educate the media on the regulation of advertisements on food and drugs to help sanitise the media landscape in respect of advertisements. She said most of the adverts on food and drugs were not acceptable because they did not conform to standards. Consequently, she urged the media, particularly, radio and television to ensure that the content they aired were approved by the FDA. She said should the media insist on inspecting approval letters from the FDA before carrying adverts on food and drugs, as well as cosmetics, it would go a long way to safeguard the society from patronising things that could be injurious to their health. FDA sleeps on its mandate The Executive Director of the Advertiser�s Association of Ghana, Mr Francis Dadzie, said the FDA had slept on its responsibility for long and waited for the situation to escalate before taking steps to address it. He said a lot of radio stations had sprung up and instead of the FDA educating them on what to do or avoid when airing advertisements, it had failed to do so, hence the present situation. Mr Dadzie recalled that in the past, when the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) was the major electronic medium, it had strong vetting committees for which reason it would not air adverts which did not meet the standard. He called on the authority to tighten its internal structures and come out with punitive measures against media houses and advertising agencies that would flout their rules. Mr Dadzie said the current situation placed children particularly at risk and reiterated his call for control measures to secure the future of the nation.