By Damilola Samuel
Consumers in Lagos have been urged to be more careful when buying palm oil as the Lagos State Consumer Protection Agency (LASCOCPA) raises concern over increasingly sophisticated methods of adulterating the widely consumed product.
According to a post on the Lagos State Government’s official Facebook account, the warning followed a technical presentation at the Lagos State Food Safety Conference and Exhibition 2026 by Dr Nurah Oseni, Senior Lecturer, Department of Food Technology, Auchi Polytechnic.
Oseni, who presented a paper titled “Palm Oil Adulteration: Emerging Risks, Detection Strategies and Regulatory Control,” said adulterators were using different substances and methods to make contaminated palm oil appear genuine.
She identified the use of potentially carcinogenic Sudan and Azo dyes to alter colour, as well as the mixing of palm oil with recovered or recycled oils, including spent cooking oil.
According to her, some adulterators are also combining several substances to make the adulteration more difficult to detect.
Oseni said palm oil was particularly vulnerable because of its high trading volume, price differences, informal market practices and consumers’ belief that deeper red colour means better quality.
She also raised concerns over falsified product labels and batch records, describing them as part of emerging digital and traceability fraud.
For consumers, she recommended visual checks as an initial precaution but stressed that appearance alone cannot confirm whether palm oil has been adulterated.
Oseni explained that palm oil may naturally separate into layers, with the lower layer often appearing orange to red-yellowish rather than uniformly deep red.
She called for stronger testing and surveillance, recommending risk-based screening, rapid physicochemical and spectroscopic tests and confirmatory laboratory analysis.
Oseni also proposed a five-step surveillance framework — “Risk Map, Sample, Screen, Confirm and Act”, supported by an adulteration intelligence database and coordinated responsibilities among processors, traders, laboratories, regulators, researchers and consumers.
The General Manager/CEO of LASCOCPA, Afolabi Solebo, urged Lagos residents to remain vigilant and report suspected adulterated palm oil through the agency’s official channels.
Solebo reaffirmed the agency’s commitment to protecting consumers from unsafe and substandard products, urging Lagosians to “shine their eyes” as market surveillance is intensified across the state.
