adminAlain Onibon Correspondent
We often talk of food and nutrition security, as if it is exclusive of food safety. However, we cannot say we have attained food and nutrition security when the food that is consumed is not safe.
The United Nations’ Committee on World Food Security defines food security as a situation when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food that meets their food preferences and dietary needs for an active and healthy life. Food safety is integral to food security as well as efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) especially SDG2 (Zero Hunger).
Unsafe food poses global health threats, endangering everyone. Infants, young children, pregnant women, the elderly and those with an underlying illness are particularly vulnerable. Every year millions of children contract diarrhoea diseases, leading to thousands of death.
Unsafe food creates a vicious cycle of diarrhoea and malnutrition, threatening the nutritional status of the most vulnerable. Where food supplies are insecure, people tend to shift to less healthy diets and consume more “unsafe foods” — in which chemical, microbiological and other hazards pose health risks.
Globally, more attention is being focused on ensuring that food safety issues are increasingly coming to the front burner and public discourse around the topic has slowly gathered momentum. This is aptly captured by the theme of this year’s World Food Day: Our Actions are our Future, Healthy Diets for a #ZeroHunger World. Such global recognitions of the need for a serious look at food safety, have not gone unnoticed locally.
In Zimbabwe, through a project called “Transforming Zimbabwe’s animal health and food safety systems for the future”— SAFE, there is a deliberate attempt to address issues of food safety. This project, funded through the European Union, focuses on animal health and food safety delivery systems. The overall objective of this project is to transform the delivery systems for improved livestock productivity, food safety for consumer safety (focusing on animal source foods) and enhancing market access.
Ultimately, this project seeks to strengthen policy and regulatory frameworks, development of efficient integrated information management systems for animal and public health, capacity development of public and private sector institutions dealing in animal health and food safety and coordination and advocacy on compliance and resource provisions for sustainable service delivery beyond the project lifespan.
It has been realised that in Zimbabwe there is limited technical and functional capacity of the regulatory departments to carry out their regulatory mandate. This, coupled with old and outdated legislation and standards governing animal health and food safety pose a serious threat to the ultimate consumers. It is thus vital to ensure that the regulatory authorities are able to carry their mandate and at the same time update the legislation and standards on food safety.
Additionally, it has been noted that there is an absence of written strategies and standards operating procedures for key staff working on animal health and food safety, in the country. The situation is exacerbated by the fact that there is limited diagnostic services offered by the public sector in terms of disease range coverage and technology used. This situation creates fertile conditions for marketing of unsafe foods, thus posing health threats to the unsuspecting consumers.
Apart from strengthening the capacity of the regulators, the project seeks to invest in specific infrastructure, for example, provision of solar-powered cold chain facilities at the animal health management centres. The provision of these cold chain facilities would see improved range of services offered to the livestock farming sector for example sample collection, storage and analysis for treatment and surveillance of animal diseases.
Through equipping key national and sub-national analytical and diagnostic laboratories such as the Government Analyst Laboratory, Central Veterinary Laboratory and provincial veterinary laboratories, this project will enable these labs undertake the expected tests and support services for improved animal disease control and food safety.
This project plays a foundational role in that its successes will spur further investment into ensuring food safety. It also has a built-in mechanism for sustainability, as it explores establishing private, public partnerships that ensure service delivery motivated by viability and profits.
Alain Onibon (PhD) is the FAO Sub-regional Coordinator for Southern Africa
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