Honorable Ministers,
Director of FAO,
Distinguished Guests and Participants,
Fellow Colleagues from FAO and WHO,
Ladies and gentlemen,
I welcome you all on behalf of the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr Lee Jong-wook, to the First Regional Conference on Food Safety for the Americas and the Caribbean organized jointly by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization.
I would like to take the opportunity to first of all thank Your Excellency, and the Government of Costa Rica for having accepted to host the First Conference on Food Safety for the Americas and the Caribbean. (Mr President) we are most grateful for the efforts of your Government to ensure that this conference will be a success.
Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Food, as a source of energy and nutrition, contributes to our general well-being. Nevertheless, food is also a vehicle for the transmission of a variety of diseases. The burden of all food-borne diseases is difficult to estimate but it is a significant one. WHO estimates that 1.8 million people die every year from diarrhoeal diseases caused by the consumption of contaminated food and water. This burden does not even include chemical hazards in food, and we know there are many. In this region of the Americas we estimate that 57 000 people die every year of food- and waterborne diarrhoeal diseases. Again we know that even more die from other hazards in food. Every week new outbreaks of food-borne disease are reported in the media. However, as important as such outbreaks might seem we should remind ourselves that these outbreaks only show us the tip of the iceberg and many more cases go unrecorded - we don't know the full extend of the problem, but we know that we can prevent it. We literally know that we can prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of people in the Americas by producing and preparing good food. And if we do so, we can also earn good money from food exports and tourism. Lets not kid ourselves: Food safety is Win-Win for everyone!! Most people just don't know - Let's use this Conference to let them know!!
In the world of today, there is a paradigm shift, meaning that food is no longer an agricultural/trade commodity only, but also a public health issue.
All the way back in 1992 the FAO/WHO International Conference on Nutrition recognized that ‘access to nutritionally adequate and safe food is a right of each individual’.
We need to help each other to ensure safe food to each individual. The food production system is no longer national. We get food from all over the world. We have to collaborate not only about the buying and selling of food but also about preventing disease. Understanding that food safety authorities can help across borders, WHO and FAO have recently launched INFOSAN, the International Food Safety Authorities Network. During its first year, more than 140 Member States have joined the network. This interest from Member States shows that the Network is filling a need as a mechanism to share knowledge between authorities. Part of INFOSAN is the INFOSAN Emergency system which will enable timely preventive action if an international emergency situation should occur involving food. And when we talk about food safety emergencies we of course also have to include terrorist attacks as an unwanted but real possibility.
Last May the World Health Assembly, the highest governing body of the WHO, adopted the revised International Health Regulations. The International Health Regulations, or IHR, are binding rules for all Member States, originally covering the need for informing everyone about Yellow Fever, Cholera and Plague. Recognizing that global health includes many more diseases in present day society the Member States of WHO set out to revise the IHR and include all incidents of international importance. The revised IHR provides a unique framework for the containment of public health problems including the international spread of diseases while interfering minimally with world traffic and trade. The importance of the new IHR for your work as food safety regulators should not be underestimated, and I would like to remind you that these regulations will come into force in June 2007, (some countries have even suggested that they should come into force a bit earlier because of avian influenza). The INFOSAN system, which will be an integrated part of the new IHR, will be put to good use should international public health incidents involve food as a vehicle.
Making food safe will not only protect the health of the consumer but will also produce a healthy work force and increase food exports. It will thus contribute significantly to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, including activities aimed at poverty alleviation as well as reducing child mortality and improving food safety and sustainable food trade.
Excellencies,
Participants and Guests,
To conclude, I wish to reiterate that at WHO, and together with you at this meeting, we remain convinced that with increased dialogue among all actors we can improve the safety of the food of this world, no matter where it is produced. And by doing so we can significantly reduce the burden of disease
I wish you a fruitful meeting.
Thank you very much.
