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- Last Updated 07/06/2024
World Food Safety Day is jointly facilitated the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) with the aim of drawing attention and inspiring action to help prevent, detect and manage food-borne risks, contributing to improving food safety and consumer health.
The theme of the World Food Safety Day 2024 is “Prepare for the unexpected”. This year's theme emphasizes the importance of preventing food safety incidents, regardless of whether they are simple or complicated.
World Food Safety Day
(Source: WHO, https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-food-safety-day/2024)
Why take action?
When food is unsafe, people can not consume the necessary nutrients to stay healthy, to study or to work. According the WHO’s statistic, each year more than 600 million people get ill and 420,000 die after eating contaminated food. These case are mainly preventable if food safety is controlled along the food chain, from the farm to fork.
NIFC’s action – what to prevent?
Promoting the action of “Prepare for the unexpected” raised by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the National Institute for Food Control (NIFC for short) has been implementing food poisoning prevention activities.
As the highest level food testing agency of the health sector of Vietnam with the function of determining the causes of food incidents and food-borne diseases, the NIFC’s Board of Directors and staffs comply with the slogan “Determining the cause of poisoning is our urgent task”. Determining the timely and correct cause of poisoning cases has helped doctors in treatment, helping patients recover early and prevent further food safety incidents.
In addition, following the success of 05 propaganda programs with thousands of poisoning prevention handbooks and dozens of posters (mushrooms, finger leaves, persimmons, comfrey and datura: https://nifc.gov.vn/ky-thuat-chuyen-mon/phong-chong-ngo-doc-hoa-chuong-post2143.html; https://nifc.gov.vn/ky-thuat-chuyen-mon/ Phong-chong-ngo-doc-ca-doc-duoc-post2111.html) from the period of 2021-2023, the NIFC coordinated with the provincial Food Safety and Hygiene Departments to carry out propaganda to prevent food poisoning caused by the other potentially toxic foods. This is an annual event organized by the NIFC.
Image of propaganda poster “Prevention of Capparis versicolor poisoning” of 2022
Every year, the National Institute for Food Control also organizes workshops to determine the causes of food poisoning and prevent food incidents. The workshops focused on assessing food poisoning testing and food-borne diseases, difficulties, and and solutions; Coordination activities between state management agencies and food testing units from central to local levels in food poisoning investigation, sampling, and testing of poisoning samples; The role of risk communication activities, monitoring sampling, and warning of food safety risks. This is an opportunity for authorities to exchange, coordinate and support each other in poisoning management and prevention.
In addition to testing activities to determine the cause of food poisoning, the NIFC has carried out annual proactive monitoring activities to find out biological and chemical hazards that can cause food safety incidents, timely promptly report to the Vietnam Food Administration to come up with a timely, accurate and appropriate control plan. In 2024, implementing the Official Dispatch No. 1155/ATTP-NDTP dated May 28, 2024 of the Vietnam Food Administration on strengthening supervision of food contamination hazards and the Decision No. 1533/QD-BYT on approving food safety testing activities in 2024, the NIFC has developed a plan for mornitoring sampling of agricultural products (vegetables, fruits, meat and seafood) managed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and products managed by the Ministry of Health. Samples will be tested and reported to the authorities to promptly come up with timely and effective poisoning prevention plans.
In the first 6 months of 2024, food incidents have continuously occurred in many provinces and cities over the country. The report of the Vietnam Food Administration at the online conference on strengthening food safety assurance and food poisoning prevention showed that there were 36 food safety incidents with 2,138 patients and 6 deaths in the first 5 months of 2024. That is also a warning alarm about the current situation of food safety and hygiene in Vietnam. We should join hands to build and preserve the health through control and management activities to ensure safe food for consumers. Promoting the world trend of risk-based food safety management models to prevent food incidents, the NIFC has conducted risk assessment programs on microbiological and physicochemical agents for food supplements for children, starch products, meat products and instant foods.
In response to World Food Safety Day, the NIFC will organize the International Food Control Conference 2024 in October (https://nifc.gov.vn/fcc). The main theme of the Conference is “Risk Assessment to Support Risk-based Food Safety Control”. The purposes of the conference are strengthening research, training, cooperation and scientific exchange activities related to food safety, especially on testing, controlling and preventing food safety risks. All contributions of the NIFC's staffs in particular and it’s activities in general are for a healthy and safe community. Thus, let's join hands to promote activities of “PREVENT FOOD INCIDENTS”.
