World Food Safety Day 

June 2022: Foodborne diseases affect one in ten people worldwide each year. There are over 200 of these diseases; some are mild, but others are deadly.


 
The United Nations General Assembly established World Food Safety Day in 2018 to raise awareness of this important issue. WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) jointly facilitate the observance of World Food Safety Day, in collaboration with member states and other stakeholders.
 
This year’s theme is: “Safer food, better health.” The theme highlights the role that safe, nutritional food plays in ensuring human health and wellbeing and calls for a set of specific actions across multiple sectors to make food safer: 

• Policymakers need to support policy measures to strengthen national food safety systems and ensure they comply with food safety standards, as well as engage in multi-sectoral collaboration at the local, national, regional and global levels;
• Food businesses must comply with international food standards and engage employees, suppliers and other stakeholders to grow and develop a food safety culture; and
• At the same time, educational institutions and workplaces need to promote safe food handling and support food safety. And consumers need to practice safe food handling at home and keep informed and promote food safety. 

To mark World Food safety day, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) has released a new edition of its World Food Safety Almanac online. 

One of the particular challenges is that the choice of food has become more complex in recent years. "The safety of our food and feed along complex global supply chains must remain guaranteed," says BfR President Professor Dr Andreas Hensel. "The BfR World Almanac makes an important contribution to this by making international co-operation much easier."

The Almanac also aims to support the harmonisation of existing methods and avoid duplication of effort; the BfR notes that food and feed safety can only be ensured through an international approach that involves close co-operation between countries and organisations.

Currently, 37 countries are represented with their profile in the almanac though the online project will be expanded to include more countries from different continents. Thanks to the online format, each country has access to its own country profile and is responsible for constantly updating it.

The BfR online almanac can be found here 

Image: Fresh Idea/Adobe Stock