The FAO/WHO Codex Trust Fund Secretariat has announced eight successful applications from five Codex regions. The countries or groups of countries involved will receive funding to run activities geared towards building strong and sustainable national Codex systems with the ultimate aim of increasing their participation in the work of Codex. Africa:  Mauritius Asia:  group application from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar Europe:  Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan Latin American and the Caribbean:  Guyana, and group application from El Salvador and Guatemala Southwest Pacific region:  Samoa, Tonga A spokesperson for the [...]

by Codex Committee on Spices and Culinary Herbs (CCSCH) Secretariat Towards the end of 2019, a new strain of coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2, which showed unprecedented virulence and severity, was reported from Wuhan, China. Within about three months, the number of confirmed cases of infection, called COVID-19, had soared and the virus had spread to many countries across the world with exponentially rising infection and death rates. The outbreak was then declared a global health emergency, and on 11th March 2020, WHO [...]

In Ghana, the Food and Drug Authority (FDA) led a celebration of World Food Safety Day with food safety public education in the week running up to 7 June 2020. Food safety information was shared on various local radio and TV stations across the country and on the FDA social media platform. The celebration culminated on 8 June with a webinar on the topic 'The Food Safety Situation in Our Food Business Environment during this COVID-19 period'. A recording of the webinar [...]

Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for the Near East and North Africa, and Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Region, issued a joint statement on 7 June 2020 on the occasion of World Food Safety Day. The statement highlighted the crucial role of safe food in promoting health and ending hunger. "Without universal access to safe food, the 2030 Agenda will be impossible to achieve. Everyone has the right to safe, nutritious and sufficient [...]

Food safety touches every aspect of our food system and defines how secure, sustainable, resilient, and nourishing a food supply can be when stressed. To mark the second annual World Food Safety Day, FAO North America convened a webinar exploring how to maintain safe supply chains during a pandemic and minimize future disruptions to build more resilient food systems and ensure food security on 12 June. Hank Cardello, Senior Fellow & Director, Food Policy Center, Hudson Institute moderated the expert discussion, [...]

Food safety is a shared responsibility. The Zimbabwe 2020 WFSD commemoration will bring together, through a webinar, all key players in the food system to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their operations, posed threats to food safety and how these threats are being managed. The stakeholders will also discuss what they are doing to ensure food safety in their work, the challenges they are facing and what support they require to ensure their efforts yield results. The event will [...]

Los miembros de la región de América Latina y el Caribe se reunieron en línea el 17 de junio de 2020 para debatir e intercambiar acerca de sus puntos de vista sobre el Codex, los efectos de la pandemia de la enfermedad por coronavirus (COVID-19) en curso y para definir las mejores prácticas a fin de proseguir con el trabajo del Comité antes de la próxima reunión. Diego Varela (Chile), Presidente del Comité Coordinador FAO/OMS para América Latina y el Caribe [...]

On World Food Safety Day, WHO reiterates its commitment to supporting Member States in the Region to promote and capitalize on momentum to prevent, detect and manage the risk associated to the consumption of unsafe food.  Through a message to countries, Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh explains the progress made and the remaining challenges to tackle food safety.  Based on the new, recently adopted Framework for Action on Food Safety, Dr Singh highlights the three priority areas for South-East Asia to sustain [...]

The Balai Besar POM (BBPOM) central office in Jayapura cannot work alone to guarantee food security in the province of Papua, it must work in synergy with other regional and cross-sector government offices. This suggestion was conveyed by one of the callers who joined the Interactive Dialogue "World Food Safety Day, Food Safety Joint Responsibility" at the RRI Jayapura on Tuesday 16 June 2020, which was carried out by teleconference. In an interactive dialogue guided by RRI Jayapura moderator Ida [...]

For the second year, Honduras joins the celebration of World Food Safety Day on June 7th. The objective of WFSD is to promote awareness and joint action between government sectors, producers and experts to prevent, detect and manage food-borne risks, thus contributing to improve human health, market access, tourism and sustainable development. In Honduras, various government institutions such as the Servicio Nacional de Sanidad e Inocuidad Agroalimentaria (SENASA), la Secretaría de Desarrollo Económico (SDE), la Secretaría de Salud (SESAL), la Agencia de [...]