Day to promote safety of food for a healthy and wealthy nation

By Dr Ian Goulding

The Market Access Upgrade Programme (MARKUP) Kenya, which is supported by the European Union (EU), joins the rest of the world in marking the World Food Safety Day.

This year’s theme of “Safe Food Today for a Healthy Tomorrow” is a call to all stakeholders to actively play their role in ensuring food is safe, not only at present, but also in the future.

Implemented by United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) in partnership with the government and the private sector, MARKUP Kenya is part of the regional EAC-EU MARKUP programme. It aims at promoting food safety, competitiveness and market access for Kenyan produce, and focuses on selected vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs and spices.

Access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious food is key to sustaining life and promoting good health. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances causes more than 200 diseases, ranging from diarrhoea to cancers.

An estimated 600 million – almost 1 in 10 people in the world – fall ill after eating contaminated food. About 420,000 of them die every year, resulting in the loss of 33 million healthy life years (DALYs – disability-adjusted life years). This imposes an enormous economic and social cost, especially among low-income consumers and children.

Children under five years carry 40 percent of the foodborne disease burden. Ensuring food safety is therefore an important and critical responsibility of agricultural and food business operators, from farm to fork.

Governments should ensure that a regulatory system is in place to help ensure food safety during production and distribution, and that food handlers observe safety measures.

Food supply chains cross multiple national borders. Therefore, good collaboration between governments, producers and consumers is needed to help ensure food safety.

In Kenya, the National Food and Nutrition Security Policy, adopted in 2011 by the Ministry of Health, commits the Government to “ensure that safe and high quality food is available to all Kenyans at all times, by creating public awareness on relevant issues, and by setting, promoting and enforcing appropriate guidelines, codes of practice, standards and a regulatory framework."

To this end, the Government, supported by the EU MARKUP Kenya programme, is working to strengthen the food safety capacity of government systems and institutions. The project is advising on the development of a new policy process, and drafting of a new food safety law to replace the out-of-date provisions of the Public Health Act and the Food Drugs and Chemical Substances Act. These legal frameworks do not reflect modern principles of food safety as set out in the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement of the WTO.

The new approach promotes the establishment of a new single body responsible for food safety risk management to replace the current approach, which is fragmented and distributed across several ministries and institutions.

On this occasion of the World Food Safety Day (WFSD) 2021, we at MARKUP urge all Kenyans to support this reform process by expressing its importance to your elected representatives. And for those who are engaged in the production and supply of food, including those who prepare food in the home, let us celebrate WFSD by making extra efforts to ensure that food is produced in a hygienic and safe way.

Cook food well, and if you have some left-overs, keep them in the refrigerator if possible, and reheat thoroughly when ready to eat. And always wash your hands after using the bathroom as well as before handling food.

Keep it clean and keep it safe!

The writer is the UNIDO International Expert on food safety