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A seafood processing firm promotes products using squids caught off Miyako to recover from the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster.
Food safety
Access to safe and healthy food is key to sustaining life and promoting good health. However, unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances can cause more than 200 diseases – ranging from diarrhoea to cancers. Examples of unsafe food include uncooked foods of animal origin, fruits and vegetables contaminated with pesticides and faeces, and raw shellfish containing marine biotoxins.
More than 50 000 people die every year in the Western Pacific Region from consuming unsafe food and another 125 million fall ill from unsafe food. Each year, 30% of cases of foodborne illness are in children under age 5 and an estimated 7000 children die as a result.
Diarrhoeal disease agents are the main cause of foodborne illness; the most common disease-causing agents are norovirus, non-typhoidal salmonella and campylobacter, accounting for nearly 45% of all foodborne illnesses. However, Aflatoxins are responsible for many foodborne deaths in the Region.
Foodborne diseases impede socioeconomic development by straining health care systems and harming national economies, tourism and trade. The burden of foodborne diseases to public health and to economies has often been underestimated due to underreporting and difficulty to establish causal relationships between food contamination and resulting illness or death. Children aged 5 and under carry 40% of the foodborne disease burden, with 125 000 deaths every year.
The consumption and production of safe food have immediate and long-term benefits for people, the planet and the economy. Safe food is essential to human health and well-being, only food that is safe can be traded. Safe food allows for the uptake of nutrients and promotes long-term human development.
The 2019 World Bank report on the economic burden of foodborne diseases indicated that US$ 110 billion is lost each year in productivity and medical expenses resulting from unsafe food in low- and middle-income countries. Unsafe or contaminated food leads to trade rejections, economic losses and food loss and waste, while safe food production improves economic opportunities by enabling market access and productivity.
WHO provides regional leadership to facilitate investment and coordinated evidence-based action across multiple sectors. WHO aims to strengthen national food control systems to facilitate global prevention, detection and response to public health threats associated with unsafe food. To do this, WHO supports Member States by:
- facilitating the implementation of the WHO Global Strategy for Food Safety (2022–2030) to support Member States to strengthen their national food control systems and reduce the burden of foodborne diseases through the activities of the WHO Alliance for Food Safety taking the One Health approach;
- providing independent scientific assessments on microbiological and chemical hazards that form the basis for international food standards, guidelines and recommendations, known as the Codex Alimentarius;
- assessing the performance of national food control systems throughout the entire food chain, identifying priority areas for further development, and measuring and evaluating progress over time through the FAO/WHO food control system assessment tool;
- helping implement adequate infrastructure to manage food safety risks and respond to food safety emergencies through the International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN);
- promoting safe food handling through systematic disease prevention and awareness programmes, through the WHO Five keys to safer food message and training materials;
- advocating for food safety as an important component of health security and for integrating food safety into national policies and programmes in line with the International Health Regulations (IHR 2005); and
- strengthening surveillance of and response to foodborne diseases globally by supporting countries to improve their current foodborne disease surveillance and response activities.
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