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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, let me bid all of you a warm welcome, “Selamat Datang” to Malaysia. On behalf of the Government of Malaysia and the Ministry of Health Malaysia, I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to FAO/WHO for giving Malaysia the honour of hosting this Regional Conference to deliberate on this extremely important issue of ensuring food safety. It is also heartening to note the large number of delegates and countries participating in this conference, indicating the very high priority many countries, including FAO and WHO, placed on food safety
Ladies and gentlemen,
Today’s challenge with respect to food safety is complex and multi-dimensional. Government and public attention on food safety has increased, catalyzed by the recent events associated with food safety crisis like contamination of dioxin and mad cow disease. Globalization of food trade, rising level of economic interdependence and cultural exchanges between eastern and the western world has resulted in the gradual assimilation of taste and preferences. This has resulted in an influx of a wide variety of foods on the market. These foods are produced in high technology facilities, shipped over long distances, packaged and stored in new ways and handled at more steps, rendering more opportunities in the food chain for contamination. And Malaysia is no exception in going through such dynamic changes. Those of you who had the opportunity to visit some of our hypermarkets or supermarkets will notice you can obtain foods that are produced from many different parts of the world. In such situation, any contamination from a single source may be distributed to communities across the nation and even around the world, increasing the consequences or ramifications exponentially.
Though progress in food safety around the world over the last few decades has been phenomenal due to a large part to WHO and FAO providing the necessary leadership and guidance, I still believe we can and we must do better. There is still much more to be done. As the challenges to food safety continue to evolve, we have no alternative but to adapt our food safety system to meet these changing needs for the better protection of public health. And we must ensure that the food safety system is capable of responding to and preventing food borne illness and food hazards through the most effective means possible.
We must do everything we can, individually as a nation or through regional and international collaboration 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. This I believe is especially important in assisting countries to continuously strengthen and periodically re-orientate their food safety programmes to keep-up with changes in knowledge and technology and to cope with their new obligations and rights related to the safety and quality of food traded regionally and internationally.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am sure that knowledge and experience in handling food safety issues including reducing the burden of food-borne diseases exist and should be shared, extended for the benefit of other countries or even applied globally if applicable.
Thus, it is a pleasure to note that the theme of this conference is “Practical Actions to Promote Food Safety”, aptly emphasizing the need to put in place actions that are practical and can be implemented as the best way forward in upgrading food safety. These actions must take into consideration the lessons learned from recent food safety crisis and outbreak of diseases such as bird flu and the food & mouth disease. This crisis exposes some of our weaknesses in our food safety system, both within individual country as well as between countries, helping us to determine where we should strengthen our preventive mechanisms. In other words, food safety crisis may not be all negative if we are able to learn and emerged stronger on how we can avoid any future crisis.
In this regard, conference like this provides an excellent platform/opportunity. I am also happy to see that the programme for this Conference includes the latest perspective on the following areas:-
In conclusion, I hope delegates would be able to interact and get the best out of this conference. I would also encourage you to spend some time to enjoy and visit our beautiful country, known for its rich diversity of cultures, multiracial makeup and cuisine; and bring back pleasant memories of your stay in Malaysia.
On that note, it gives me great pleasure to officially open this “FAO/WHO Regional Conference on Food Safety for Asia and the Pacific – Practical Actions to Promote Food Safety”. I would like to wish all of you every success in your deliberations and I look forward to hearing your conclusions and recommendations on the ways by which we can collectively improve food safety in the Asia and Pacific region.
