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Final report of the FAO/WHO Regional Conference on Food Safety for Asia and the Pacific |
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Distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen,
First and foremost, on behalf of the Government of Malaysia and the Ministry of Health Malaysia, I would like to extend our warm welcome to all distinguished delegates. It is indeed a great honour for Malaysia to be selected as the host for this Regional Conference, which is part of a series of regional meetings that FAO and WHO is convening to meet the needs of member countries for policy guidance and capacity building. This Conference is in line with the recommendations of the “First FAO/WHO Global Forum of Food Safety Regulators’ held in Morocco on 28-30 January 2002 and the 13th. Session of the Codex Coordinating Committee for Asia held in Kuala Lumpur on 17-20 September 2002.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We are all here today because we share the same goal, which is improving food safety and protecting public health. We are all working towards achieving the same objective, no matter how different is our thoughts or approaches. In this regards, I can safely say that we are all allies in this struggle and the enemy are the microorganisms and other food hazards.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I think most of us here today understand that “safety” does not mean “no risk”. It is simply not feasible to identify every possible adverse effect of a food product. Analyzing safety often means the judicious weighing of the benefits as well as the risks. To do this we must identify and assess the risk associated with a food product, work to eliminate or minimize those risks and communicate risk information to all relevant stakeholders. This can be aptly summarized by the following saying/cliché “All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates a poison and a remedy”
It must also be emphasized that the price of not taking adequate actions or any single mistake in ensuring safety can be catastrophic, as can been seen by recent incident of food contamination by dioxin and BSE. Every food borne outbreak can be an economic disaster not just to the company that produce the products associated with the outbreak but to the entire industry and affecting the whole country. This is because most of the public do not differentiate between lot numbers or even brands. With the stroke of a brush, the public will blacklist the entire industry and not just the brands or lot number.
Ladies and gentlemen,
As we are all aware, food safety is a global issue that demands a global response. Many of the food safety issues we faced domestically are also shared throughout the world. Diseases and pathogens do not respect national borders. As such, regional and international collaboration is critical in developing effective solutions. Therefore in addition to our efforts to develop partnership within our domestic food chain, it is also important to establish a variety of working regional and international cooperation to exchange information and to learn from each other’s experiences for the mutual benefits of all.
However, keeping up with such developments and adopting or adapting the new ways to prevent and to respond to new hazards require tremendous political commitment and effort from all stakeholders, especially developing countries that do not have adequate resources or capacity but depend on food export as a source of foreign earnings.
Ladies and gentlemen,
In this regard, this Regional Conference provides us with an appropriate forum and the opportunity to discuss food safety issues of common interest and promote the exchange of information and learn from each other experience to further improve food safety.
It is also important to note that such conference can provide the impetus for further collaborative effort in the area of food safety, especially in building alliances for capacity building and scientific cooperation. Such alliances, I am sure, will facilitate the pooling of resources and expertise to achieve results faster and greater than it could have been achieved alone. It will also allow expertise to be drawn internally, regionally and internationally
In closing, I would like to thank all of you for your interest in this important area of food safety and I look forward to an active and open discussion on all the themes of this conference with all of you in the next few days. Last but not least, I would also like to take this opportunity to wish all delegates an enjoyable stay in Malaysia.
