Today, All around the world, public health personnel and medical professionals observed World Food Safety Day. It is to remind everyone of the importance of the job that these officials perform, while they police the agro-productive and livestock producing sectors.
The world's leading health organizations say 1 in 10 people around the globe get sick from eating contaminated food. That's more than than half a billion victims in need of medical attention, and from that number, just under half a million of those patients die every year from food-borne illnesses.
On Sunday, 2 days later, everyone will be observing World Accreditation Day to note the importance of standards, and how the policing of standards protects consumers of all goods.
Instead of holding different events for these 2 days, the Belize Bureau of Standards and the Belize Agricultural Health Authority decided to collaborate on a training session for their personnel. 7News stopped by this morning and spoke with officials from these 2 important government offices, and they shared a few more details about the link between the 2.
Jose Trejo - Director, Bureau of Standards
"We are celebrating, June 7th, World Food Safety Day. It's the first time that the country is observing the day. And I think the theme is Food Safety is Everybody's business. In term of the collaboration, because the days are so close, World Accreditation Day is celebrated June 9th. So, we felt that it would be an opportune time for us to celebrate both these together, since they're so close. As it relates to our mandate, well the Bureau of Standards, as you know, has that responsibility for standardization, metrology, certification and accreditation. For us, one of the important things in food safety is to ensure that we have the technical capabilities and the competencies, to be able to test, to be able to sample, to be able to inspect, to calibrate, and so on."
Dr. Miguel Figueroa - Food Safety Director, BAHA
"The World Health Organization reports that 1 out of 10 people all over the world will get sick from eating contaminated food. And that translates to about 600 million people all over the world getting sick every year. And apart from that, out of those 600 million, you have about 420 thousand people dying as a result of that."
"The responsibility lies within the farmer himself or herself. The farmer is the one responsible to ensure that their animals are health, that you're not pumping any antibiotics, or any other chemicals that will then pass on to the food. So the farmer is the one responsible for that animal. So, if that animal goes to the slaughterhouse, you are now, you will not give it the injection right before it goes to the slaughterhouse. Because, the residues - chemical residues - will appear in the meat, and we will consume it."
"The slaughterhouse itself also has responsibility. They have to employ what we call good manufacturing practices, or good hygienic practices. They do have to ensure also that their processing is in a safe manner. And then, from the processing facility, it goes to the distribution. So, the transporters are also responsible that whatever they're transporting to the supermarket, to the retail, to the restaurant, that they're doing it in a proper manner. Finally, we have the retail shop and the supermarkets. They have to store their food properly. We have this notion, or this thing that at night, they unplug their refrigeration to save some money. But, they are responsible for their product."
"And of course the consumers, they have to always used potable water, cook properly, and store it properly as well."
Jose Trejo
"We collaborate with BAHA a regular basis because everything we as institutions is driven by standards. They might have a different mandate for plant health, food safety, and quarantine. But, when you look at it holistically, in terms of at a global level, everything is connected, and it's connected based on standards."
"Intrinsic in the quality of a product is that good practices, that food hygiene, that food safety."
The BAHA Food Safety Director told us about a 2012 study which was done by Ministry of health, in partnership with the Pan-American Health Organization, and the Caribbean Public Health Agency. The results of the study on Belize during that time indicated that 48,000 Belizeans got sick from eating contaminated food. That translated to a loss in economic earnings for the entire country totaling 18.6 million dollars, lost to sick days.
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