5 March
Food safety and nutrition are the most important factors to consider when purchasing food. Nowadays, consumers are worried about the presence of bacteria, viruses, or contaminants in the food supply chain.
Each food item sold to the people in the market and every product sold or served to customers should be free from chemicals or chemical residues, bacteria, and viruses. Only then can people lead healthy lives.
The incidence of food poisoning and non-communicable diseases depends on the food we consume every day. Globally, contaminated food and water are thought to be responsible for 600 million people falling ill and 420,000 deaths each year.
The burden of food-borne diseases falls largely on low-income and middle-income countries and young children. But, unsafe food can have a substantial impact on health even in high-income countries.
As a first step for ensuring food safety, we need to adopt a roadmap with the necessary rules and regulations, taking into consideration food scares and concerns of the people. Once implemented, the regulations must be monitored and assessed to achieve fruitful results.
Food safety isn’t just about rules and regulations and corporate bottom lines. It’s about public trust and safety, and that is an emerging issue that needs to be resolved in our country.
The most important thing is that those who sell food should have knowledge of health and food safety and practice hygiene. To achieve this, the health authorities are obliged to raise awareness on health and food safety among sellers.
The Ministry of Health alone cannot ensure effective enforcement of the rules and make each food item safe for consumption. All hands — from regional governments, development affairs committees, and organizations concerned with food production and consumption — need to be on deck for establishing food safety in the community.
Awareness of food safety issues is only the first step: considerable and concerted efforts need to be made by producers, governments, regulatory agencies, and consumers to ensure that the food we eat is safe.
Food safety really is everyone’s business. To ensure the food we consume is safe, preventive measures need to be built into food production, processing, and marketing from the beginning.
GNLM
