Folic acid food fortification should be mandatory – Keane

Fine Gael Senator for Dublin South-West, Cáit Keane, has today (Thursday) called on the Food Safety Authority, to introduce mandatory folic acid food fortification and to have a renewed public health campaign to promote the importance of taking folic acid pre pregnancy. The Senator made her calls in response to the findings of a new study carried out by the UCD centre for human reproduction and the HSE Eurocat Registers, which reveals that there has been a rise of 10% in neural tube defects such as spina bifida and anencephaly in babies since 2009.  

“I am raising this issue today to emphasise the importance of folic acid in a pregnant or pre-pregnant woman’s diet. Even before a woman becomes pregnant, what she eats is very important for the healthy development of her baby. This is even more important when you consider that many women may be unaware of their pregnancy I the first few weeks, a crucial time in the baby’s development.

“Folic acid, which is also known as folate, is a form of vitamin B. Like most other vitamins, it cannot be made in the body, so it must be taken either in dietary form or as a supplement. Folic acid plays an important role in the growth of the baby in early pregnancy. Foods rich in folic acid should be eaten both before becoming pregnant and in the first three months of pregnancy as it has been shown to reduce the risk of having a baby with a neural tube defect such as spina bifida.

“Women at high risk, particularly those who have previously had a child with a neural tube defect, should take a higher dose of folic acid and doctors are best placed to advise women about this. There is at least one case a week of an often preventable neural tube defect in a newborn baby and this trend must be reversed.  The burden of disease on the child and on the family can be enormous.

“More than 50 countries including the United States have mandatory folic acid fortification in food such as flour but the Irish government reversed a decision to introduce a similar system in 2008 because there were falling rates of neural tube defects in the early 2000s. This new study has revealed a significant increase and a worrying increase that as a Government, we must not ignore. Therefore I am calling on the Food Safety Authority of Ireland to review the policy of not having a folic acid food fortification policy and also to have a renewed public health campaign to promote pre conceptual folic acid.”