World Food Safety Day 2021.

World Food Safety Day (WFSD) observed on 7 June 2021 aims to attract attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect and manage foodborne risks, contribute to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agriculture, market access, tourism, and sustainable development.

This year's theme, 'Safe food today for a healthy tomorrow', emphasizes that the production and consumption of safe food has immediate and long-term benefits for people, the planet and the economy.

Recognizing the systemic links between human, animal, plant, environmental and economic health will help us meet the needs of the future.

Recognizing the global burden of foodborne illness, affecting individuals of all ages, in particular children under 5 years of age and people living in low-income countries,

The United Nations General Assembly declared in 2018 that June 7 will be World Food Safety Day.

In 2020, the World Health Assembly further adopted a decision to strengthen food safety efforts to reduce the burden of foodborne disease.

WHO and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) jointly facilitate the observance of World Food Security Day, in collaboration with Member States and other relevant organizations.

Food safety is a shared responsibility between governments, producers and consumers. Everyone has a role to play from the farm to the dinner table to ensure the food we eat is safe and healthy.

Through World Food Safety Day, WHO seeks to mainstream food safety on the public agenda and reduce the global burden of foodborne disease.

Food safety is everyone's business.

Call to action:

1-Make sure it's safe-

Governments must ensure safe and nutritious food for all.

2-Plants safely-

Agricultural and food producers need to adopt good practices.

3-Stay safe-

Business operators must ensure food is safe.

4-Know what is safe-

Consumers need to learn about safe and healthy food.

5-Working together for food safety

-Working together for safe food and good health.

WFP welcomes commitment to famine prevention by G7; calls for swift action to prevent widespread catastrophe

This weekend, leaders of the G7 acknowledged the unprecedented humanitarian crisis our world faces today as more than 34 million people teeter on the edge of famine and endorsed a Famine Prevention Compact to urgently address the problem. This is a welcome move

We can pull each of these 34 million individuals back from the brink, prevent starvation, and save millions of lives and livelihoods. All we need is the funding and access to do so.

Within the Compact, the G7 leaders have reaffirmed their commitment to provide $7 billion in vital humanitarian assistance and take diplomatic action to promote humanitarian access. These elements of the Compact are the minimum requirements that must be actioned immediately to save lives.

In March, WFP and FAO called for US$5.5 billion to scale-up operations and avert widespread famine. At that time, this was roughly 40% of our yearly operational budget. Unfortunately, funding shortfalls continue to hold us back from preventing famine from taking a grip in countries such as Yemen, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Madagascar, and, most recently, the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

For the next six months alone, WFP requires $4.5 billion and the consequences of inaction and funding shortfalls will be measured in lost lives, and setbacks in progress towards long-term development goals.

Due to funding issues, WFP is, in some cases, taking food from the hungry to give to the starving. People in South Sudan and Yemen, two countries with some people already living in famine-like conditions, have faced ration cuts in the first half of this year. Meanwhile, in Burkina Faso funding gaps forced WFP to reduce food assistance by up to 50 percent for 1.4 million people during the lean season and in Madagascar, only those facing catastrophic levels of hunger (IPC5) receive full rations and for people where the food insecurity situation is at emergency levels (IPC4) food assistance has been cut in half.

Insecurity also poses constraints to WFP operations; while we have managed to scale up despite serious challenges in northern Mozambique and ‘stay and deliver’ in Afghanistan, we struggle to reach people in countries such as the Central Sahel region, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan.

For example, in Tigray, where 350,000 people face catastrophic levels of hunger, humanitarian access is the main challenge to WFP being able to expend operations and humanitarian assistance is still being blocked by armed groups. Collective action must be taken quickly to ensure that this window of opportunity is not missed and we can reverse the current life-threatening deterioration in food security.

Our ability to save lives depends on unimpeded humanitarian access and having funding commitments fulfilled so we’re able to expand and reach those who are most in need.

According to APO Group on behalf of World Food Programme (WFP).