5 Important Steps to Ensure Food Safety

Foodborne illnesses kill nearly 2 million people each year, causing more than 200 diseases globally.

On April 7, in Hanoi, the Department of Food Safety (Ministry of Health) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in Vietnam held a ceremony to celebrate World Health Day with the theme "Food Safety".

At the celebration, Mr. Nguyen Thanh Phong, Director of the Department of Food Safety (Ministry of Health) gave "5 important steps to ensure food safety". These are: Keeping food processing areas clean; Storing raw and cooked foods separately; Cooking food thoroughly to kill all bacteria that can cause disease; Storing food at the right temperature; Using clean water and fresh foods for processing.

Ensuring food safety is the responsibility of both producers and consumers.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Health, in 2014, there were 194 cases of food poisoning in Vietnam, causing over 5,000 people to be poisoned, 80% of whom were hospitalized and 43 cases died. The number of people affected and hospitalized has decreased significantly compared to 2013.

Mr. Nguyen Thanh Phong emphasized: To change awareness about food safety, we need to build a strategy to educate consumers about food safety, campaigns, and widely disseminate information about food safety to the community...".

According to WHO, unsafe food causes nearly 2 million deaths a year and causes more than 200 diseases globally. As food sources become increasingly globalized, new risks are constantly emerging.

Dr. Satoko Otsu, Head of the World Health Organization's Emerging Disease Surveillance and Response Team, said that since 2010, there have been an estimated 582 million cases of 22 different diseases related to the digestive tract (of which 40% were children under 5 years old) and 351,000 deaths.

In the US, 1 in 6 people get sick from food each year. In Vietnam, there were 194 cases of food poisoning, resulting in 4,000 hospitalizations. Unsafe food can have serious impacts on health, society, economy and development./.

According to VOV.VN