Foodlaw-Reading
Dr David Jukes, The University of Reading, UK
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FAO Food Safety News Item, 23 August 2023
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INFOSAN Activity report 2020-202 The document can be downloaded from the FAO website (click on image) |
FAO and WHO have noted a record high number of food safety incidents in the newly released International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN) activity report for the two-year period, 2020-2021. During that time, the INFOSAN Secretariat responded to 375 international food safety events, nearly twice the number, 162, in 2018-2019 and the highest number since the Network was established in 2004. During these events, the INFOSAN Secretariat facilitated communication, connecting Members and ensuring access to essential information, such as distribution details of implicated products to their countries and from their countries. The support provided by the Secretariat also helped authorities identify the source of notified outbreaks. Having reliable and timely information helps to better position countries to mitigate the incidence of foodborne diseases by preventing further distribution of contaminated food through trade and activating its recall.
The report considers why international emergency response activities may have increased, listing among the possible reasons: greater awareness of food safety risks, better reporting of food safety issues, stronger collaboration with partners and increased capacity at Members level or the INFOSAN Secretariat. “In addition to facilitating the communication and exchange of information between food safety authorities of countries involved in the trade of the food concerned, the INFOSAN Secretariat has carried out a number of capacity-building initiatives to strengthen national inter-agency coordination and notifications to INFOSAN and supported competent authorities to exchange experiences in operating in pandemic-related lockdown conditions,” said Eleonora Dupouy, FAO Food Safety Officer. She explained that these elements were essential for effective response to food safety emergencies occurring in the food trade in the reporting period.
“The pandemic underlined the importance for Member States to strengthen food safety systems, including international and multisectoral collaboration for emergency response, to ensure solid risk communication, allowing for food distributed at the international level to be safe,” wrote Markus Lipp, FAO Senior Food Safety Officer, in a foreword of the report that was signed jointly with Luz de Regil of WHO.
The report includes several tables of data showing the hazards that caused the food safety events, the types of food affected and the regions where they were reported.
Like the previous two-year period, biological hazards were responsible for the largest number of INFOSAN events, followed in decreasing order by: undeclared allergens, physical hazards, chemical hazards and several cases involved unspecified hazards.
As for food categories, the most implicated in the incidents was fish and other seafood, followed by milk and dairy, meat and meat products, and snacks and desserts. Most of the events involved Member States in the European Region, followed by the African Region, the Region of the Americas, the Western Pacific Region, the Eastern Mediterranean Region and the South-East Asia Region.
