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Celebrated on June 7 every year, World Food Safety Day (WFSD) inspires action and draw attention to help prevent and manage foodborne risks that are often caused by viruses, bacteria or chemical substances entering the human body through contaminated food or polluted water.
Food safety has become even more necessary during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Although there’s no evidence that the deadly contagion can live or grow on food, safe hygiene practices are still recommended by the international organisations for your safety.
World Food Safety Day 2021 Theme
This year, the theme for World Food Safety Day is ‘Safe food today for a healthy tomorrow’.
This year’s theme focuses on producing as well as consuming safe food.
Significance
Nearly 600 million people every year fall sick from eating contaminated food – and 420,000 of them die.
In simple words, when food is unsafe, children cannot learn and adults cannot work, thereby a lack of access to safe food hinders human development.
Food Safety: A Shared Responsibility
Food safety is a shared responsibility between governments, producers, consumers, regional economic bodies, trade organizations and academic and research institutions.
Everybody has an important role to play from farm to table to ensure the food we consume is safe and healthy.
Quotes
• “Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.” – Hippocrates
• “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” – Mahatma Gandhi
• “Get people back into the kitchen and combat the trend toward processed food and fast food”. – Andrew Orwell
• “We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.” – George Orwell
• “Our minds are like our stomachs; they are whetted by the change of their food and variety supplies both with a fresh appetite.” – Quintilian
How to celebrate #WorldFoodSafetyDay2021
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this crucial day is being celebrated virtually. You can take part by sharing food safety tips on yoru social media accounts with the hashtag #WorldFoodSafetyDay2021.
In short, this international day is an opportunity to realise that safe food is critical not only to better health and food security, but also for livelihoods, economic development and trade of every country.
