Institutionalisation of food safety in Bangladesh for safer food

The Institutionalisation of food safety in Bangladesh for safer food project was very relevant as it was implemented at a perfect time while the country was establishing its new Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA).

Notable results were achieved in supporting the newly created authority by helping to define its role, objectives and activities as well as draw up standard operating procedures and codes of practice. The project contributed to strengthen institutional coordination and defining mechanisms for establishing standards and regulations. It also created a strong drive to adopt an integrated ‘farm-to-fork’ approach in two important economic sectors, namely the poultry and mango sectors.

Important advances were made in raising awareness of the notion that food safety is a shared responsibility between public services, food business operators and consumers. The large media campaigns initiated were effective in reaching consumers, and the various training activities and workshops organized were beneficial and well received by food business operators.

Awareness was raised among public authorities and stakeholders of the need for a risk-based approach with regard to allocating public resources for food control and inspection. While the project provided support for the implementation of a risk-based inspection approach, it did not sufficiently address the development of data collection and processing skills, risk ranking and risk assessment tools, as well as more generally did not sufficiently integrate the principles of risk analysis applicable to food safety systems.

The mobile laboratory of the Bangladesh Food Safety Authority takes only five minutes to test for formalin and other chemicals in different food items. Photo: Mumit M

The extensive training conducted helped to increase the level of awareness of most actors and to develop a general culture conducive to enhanced food safety. While the project trained a large number of people, in some cases the limited duration of such training did not allow for a significant increase in participants’ technical capacities. Finally, the introduction of a Bachelor of Science degree course in food safety management is an important achievement for medium and long-term capacity development that needs to be sustained after project end.

Recommendations

FAO should support BFSA in conducting a self-assessment of the food control system in Bangladesh to identify priority areas for improvement, and to plan sequential and coordinated activities to reach the expected outcomes using the Food Control System Assessment Tool. By repeating the assessment on a regular basis, Bangladesh will be able to use this tool to monitor their progress.

FAO should support BFSA in building a multi-disciplinary risk assessment team. Core competencies for such a team might include epidemiology, biostatistics, microbiology, toxicology, data science and food science. This team, through an advanced training cycle in risk assessment methodologies, could constitute the platform for scientific expertise in food safety.

The evaluation recommends for FAO to consider the following areas of work for future support to BFSA:

• Data literacy activities that will promote the creation of a data ecosystem for a data-driven food control system.
• Collaboration such as the twinning projects supported by the European Commission – this type of project will allow BFSA to establish close contacts with food safety agencies that have experience and expertise in providing scientific advice to inform food-safety policy makers.
• Test and evaluate how a voluntary third-party assurance programme can be implemented in Bangladesh – although Output 3 of this project addressed the issue of third-party certification, there are still many obstacles to overcome to create a true public–private partnership for better enforcement of hygiene rules and compliance by
  establishments with food safety standards; this type of partnership, which was considered by the project but not yet achieved, could be the solution for the implementation of a real risk-based food safety system and risk-based inspection.