Guyana committed to following international standards to ensure food safety

Guyana joined the rest of the world in celebrating World Food Safety Day under the theme ‘Safer food, better health’ and has committed to following the international best practices to promote better food safety.
This was highlighted by Director of Planning at the Ministry of Agriculture, Natasha Berrjit Deonarine, who was speaking on behalf of Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha at an event to mark the occasion on Tuesday.

She noted that as Guyana is leading Caricom in reducing its food bill with the “25 by 2025” initiative, of which food safety is critical, the country has no option but to join other developed countries in promoting regional and international standards for food safety.
“Standards and regulations are becoming much more important to keep us safe…we must be prepared to accelerate our efforts to join these globally accepted measures to strengthen our food safety system. Our national policies are aligned with the Caricom vision ‘25 by 2025’,” she explained.
“Guyana’s the lead for agriculture in Caricom. Has been on fast track to replacing imported food and being a major regional exporter of food. We have no other option but to rapidly improve our food control system to fully meet the regional and international standards,” Deonarine explained.
She also highlighted that food safety is of high importance in terms of promoting better health.

“Guyana is a food producer, contributing to our national food security. Guyana is also an exporter of food; so, to focus on our domestic consumption, or whether it’s our international trade, food safety and quality is of paramount importance,” she said.
“It is (our) profound intent to foster a comprehensive agri-food system, a system that is characterised by food that is safe, wholesome and nutritious for everyone to be healthy. As we join with the world today, I remind that the observance embodies the global call to food safety awareness, and inspires action to help prevent, detect, and manage food-borne risks,” she stated.
In order to promote better food practices, Deonarine stated, the Ministry is committed to enhancing the food control system in Guyana. These efforts include increasing public awareness and education on food safety through television, radio, and social media platforms; developing food safety training plans to the technical capacity in food safety standards; working to minimise food hazards by developing food handlers; and working to a national farm-traceability system.
This, she stated “will be an important tool used to safeguard freshness; protect the quality, and ensure integrity in the origin of the food; and this is because safe food must start from the source.”
Deonarine also related that a number of initiatives to ensure food safety have been implemented through international partners such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), among others.
Meanwhile, speaking at the event, Dr Gillian Smith, a representative of the FAO, lamented that food-borne risks such as producing contaminated food and misusing antibiotics, among other things, can lead to illness and, in some cases, even death.
“Globally, food contaminated by bacteria, viruses, parasites and chemicals cause I in 10 people to become ill each year, reducing productivity, increasing absence from school, resulting in preventable suffering, and even death,” she explained.
“Misuse of antibiotics (not only) in human health, but also in animal husbandry, which ends up in the environment, over time has helped to create resistant microbes that result in more than 700,000 deaths each year, again preventable,” Dr. Gillian Smith added.
As such the FAO is encouraging producers’ uptake of better food practices, especially at the level of production.