Cooking with poison

Cut-price cooking oil used in most Malian households has been found to contain gossypol, a toxic substance that is known to cause sterility, cancer and inhibit growth.

Only two out of 57 oil producers studied around the country had the necessary equipment to produce safely-refined cooking oil, revealed a November 2007 investigation by the Mali government. The rest were producing oil containing gossypol, a harmful poison.

“The results are alarming…after evaluating the oil mills, we realised most of them did not have proper refining equipment,” Adama Konaté, the government industries director told IRIN.

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