Food safety is everyone’s business and promoting food safety makes a real difference in an age where almost a billion people on earth starve annually. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of policymakers, food safety authorities, farmers, food business operators, cooks, scientists, teachers, students and consumers, awareness about food safety around the world is increasing. World Food Safety Day helps to make that difference and continues to underline the key message that there can be no food security without food safety.
The theme of this year’s World Food Safety Day, 7th June 2023, is Food Standards Save Lives. Food standards help us to know that our food is safe when we eat because established food safety practices, based on food standards, are applied throughout the food chain. Food standards are a way of ensuring safety and quality, for example, including maximum allowable levels for additives, pesticides and contaminants, allergen labelling requirements, nutritional standards and specifications for measuring, handling, packing and transporting food. Food standards protect consumers.
Science is essential to food safety management and most governments and organisations adopt and enforce food standards based on scientific risk assessment. Sometimes these are developed by individual governments or organisations, and sometimes by regional/international intergovernmental standard setting bodies such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission (Codex). Codex has 188 member countries plus 1 member organisation (the European Union), and has a mandate to protect consumer health and ensure fair practices in food trade. Codex standards have been at the heart of food safety for 60 years and they define the path to safe food for everyone everywhere.
Underpinning this path to safe food, science-based education and training is vital for all actors and stakeholders throughout the food chain, including growers, processors, brokers and retailers, food service providers, and consumers. Working within the food supply chain, food handlers, supervisors, business owners, product developers, inspectors, government officials, buyers and customers all need to understand the food safety standards for the food materials that they work with.
The International Union of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST) is the global scientific organization and voice for food science and technology. IUFoST offers programmes to improve the safety and sufficiency of food around the world. Recognising the importance of standards for food science and food safety education, IUFoST has been active in development of curricula for university food safety courses that can be tailored to different regional settings. On this year’s world food safety day, IUFoST celebrates its joint initiative with the Association of African Universities to establish and apply suitable food safety education curricula and benchmarking of courses at universities in the African region. Educational standards underpinned by food safety science will enable the next generation of food chain workers to play their roles in making sure food is safe to eat; applying food standards to save lives.
(Statement prepared and agreed on behalf of IUFoST by Expert Working Group on Food Safety: Chair Carol Anne Wallace and Members, Ratih Dewanti-Hariyadi, Afam I. O. Jideani, Cesar Ozuna, Deirdre Mikkelsen, Jay Kant Yadav and Sophie Tongyu Wu.)
