The World Food Safety Day is an annual event jointly promoted by the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and the WHO (World Health Organization). It aims to inspire everyone from all around the globe to prevent, detect, and manage food safety risks, in order to contribute to the betterment of health, especially in the developing countries.
This event was first introduced by the FAO in 2018 to highlight the importance of food safety to support the sustainable and continuing goals for development, especially issues in relation to health, hunger, and agriculture.
The Significance of Taking Action
Food is important for activity, and more so the safety of food consumed daily. When food safety is compromised, people will not be able to receive the daily nutrients they need to do their activities. Contaminated food has been a serious issue for the past decade. Many cases of deaths can be traced back to the safety and hygiene of food materials and food processing. This shows that everyone in the society has a vital role to make sure that food is safe to eat. Keeping this in mind, the World Food Safety 2024 promotes the following slogan : FOOD SAFETY IS EVERYONE’S BUSINESS.
Through this year’s World Food Safety Day, FAO and WHO emphasise four key messages that everyone engaging in the food-processing fields should keep in mind:
- Preparedness. Food safety incidents could happen anytime, and therefore a safety measure should be in place whenever an immediate action is needed. Cautionary and preventive actions would save lives when unprecedented dangers are present.
- Collaboration. A sense of food safety awareness shared across global, regional, national, and local levels would be able to raise the health impact and keep the occurrence of food hazard incidents to minimum.
- Communication. Accurate and timely information would provide a great value in maintaining food safety. Before one minor incident that would affect the entire food chain is immediately informed and resolved, lives will be saved.
- Shared Responsibility. If everyone has the awareness to evaluate food safety risks in their daily choices, food hazards will be greatly monitored and taken care of together by all members of society.
FAO also recommends some practical actions that can be done for combating food safety issues. Food Businesses can improve their food safety plans by actively communicating with the consumers, while consumers are educated with how to respond when food safety incidents. Governments are also expected to increase their coordination and communication efforts with the public to maintain a healthy countermeasure against food hazards.
Are you interested to know more about World Food Safety Day and how you can make a change? Visit here and join the effort in promoting food safety.
Link : https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-food-safety-day/2024
