June 7, 2023/International Food Safety Day: food standards save lives

---

Extract from the article: International Food Safety Day, celebrated today, June 7, 2023, focuses on food standards. Food-borne illnesses affect 1 in 10 people worldwide every year. Food standards help to ensure that what we eat is safe. Access to sufficient quantities of safe

---

International Food Safety Day, celebrated today, June 7, 2023, focuses on food standards. Food-borne illnesses affect 1 in 10 people worldwide every year. Food standards help to ensure that what we eat is safe. Access to sufficient quantities of safe, nutritious food is essential to sustaining life and promoting good health. Food safety, nutrition and food security are closely linked. Unsafe food creates a vicious circle of disease and malnutrition, particularly affecting infants, young children, the elderly and the sick.

According to the WHO, an average of 600,000 people a day fall ill because they have eaten unsafe food. An average of 340 children under the age of 5 die every day from preventable food-borne illnesses. Around 200 illnesses are caused by unfit food, ranging from diarrhoea to cancer.

Food safety is the joint responsibility of national authorities, producers and consumers. Everyone has a role to play, from farm to fork, in ensuring that the food we eat is safe and healthy. As well as contributing to food and nutritional security, a safe food supply also supports national economies, trade and tourism, stimulating sustainable development. The globalization of food trade, a growing world population, climate change and rapidly evolving food systems are all having an impact on food security.

Through the International Food Safety Day, WHO strives to ensure the integration of food safety into public policy and to reduce the global burden of foodborne disease. WHO also aims to strengthen global and national capacity to prevent, detect and respond to public health threats associated with unsafe food.

Jean ELI