| Celebrated Every Year on 7th June |
CRUX
| Started Year | 2019 |
| Celebrated By | UN Members |
| First Observed | 7th June 2019 |
| In Honour of | FAO |
To sustain our life we need food, water, air and shelter. Food plays vital role to keep us healthy and stable. Though we can’t consume randomly available food. Because whichever products we want to buy, we will look for its adverse effects. But while consuming food which is survivor of human beings, we never bothered about ingredients. We only go for taste. So it’s our sole responsibility to check what we are taking as our food. To create awareness among all, food and agriculture organization initiated World food safety day.
HISTORY
World Food Safety Day is sponsored by the UN. This day aims to bring awareness and emphasize the significance of producing and distributing food properly. The UN estimates 600M cases of food borne diseases every year. Unsafe food can be extremely harmful to everyone, especially women and children. An estimate of 3 million people die every year due to food and water related diseases. World Food Safety Day happens every year on June 7th.
ABOUT
The 2nd World Food Safety Day (WFSD) was celebrated on 7th June 2020 to bring consciousness and inspire action to help avoid, detect and manage food borne risks, contributing to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agriculture, market access, tourism and sustainable development.
After the success of the 1st commemoration in 2019, this year again WFSD reinforces the call to strengthen commitment to scale up food safety made by the Addis Ababa Conference and the Geneva Forum in 2019 under the umbrella of “The Future of Food Safety”. WHO, in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is pleased to facilitate Member States efforts to celebrate the World Food Safety Day.
On the theme “Food safety, everyone’s business”, the action oriented campaign promoted global food safety awareness and call upon countries and decision makers, the private sector, civil society, United nation organizations and the general public to take action.
Call of action:
1 – Make sure it is safe – Government must certify safe and nutritious food for everyone.
2 – Grow it safe – Food producers need to adopt good practices.
3 – Keep it safe – Business operators must keep food safe.
4 – Eat it safe: All consumers have a right to consume safe, healthy and nutritious food.
5 – Team up for safety – Food Safety is a shared responsibility of all.
Food safety is a shared responsibility between governments, producers and consumers. Everybody has an equal role to play from farm to table to make sure that the food we consume is safe and it will not cause harm to our health. Through the World Food Safety Day, WHO pursues its efforts to mainstream food safety in the public agenda and reduce the burden of food borne diseases globally.
The first ever World Food Safety Day was celebrated on June 7th, 2019. The theme of that day was “Food Safety, everyone’s business”.
Food safety is the handling, preparing and storing of food in the best way possible so to reduce the risk of individuals becoming sick from food borne illnesses.
Food-borne diseases:
With an estimated 600M cases of food borne diseases is recording every year. Almost 1 among 10 individual in the world fall into sick after in taking contaminated food.
Children below 5 years old carry about 40% of the food borne disease burden with 1,25,000 deaths every year. Food contamination is a dangerous threat which is increasing exponentially that affects human health. Therefore food safety is the only key to achieve healthy life.
CELEBRATION IN INDIA
Dr. Harsh Vardhan who is a Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare inaugurated the first World Food Safety Day which is celebrated by Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).
Dr. Harsh Vardhan disclosed a statue of ‘Gandhiji on a Bicycle’ situated at the FSSAI complex.
The Union Health Minister complimented seven leading State or UTs based on the ranking for the year 2018-2019 for their impressive performance. Those were Chandigarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.
FSSAI has developed the first State Food Safety Index (SFSI) to measure the performance of States based on five parameters on food safety. The categories included human resources and institutional arrangements, compliance, food testing- infrastructure and surveillance, training and capacity building and consumer empowerment
Dr. Harsh Vardhan launched a hand-held battery operated device called ‘Raman 1.0’. This device performs rapid detection (in less than 1minute) of economically driven adulteration in edible oils, fats and ghee.
A Web-resource online Library of FSSAI was also launched. This library gives informative and interesting videos on topics such as food adulteration, eating a balanced diet, fortified foods etc.
