It is a pleasure to attend this inaugural ceremony of the FAO/WHO Regional Conference on Food Safety for the Americas and the Caribbean, organized in response to requests for advice on policies and actions to strengthen capacity building in areas relating to food safety in the countries of the region.
Food safety is fundamental in ensuring each individual's right to safe and wholesome food, as enshrined in the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights endorsed at the International Conference on Nutrition in Rome, 1992.
Similarly, food safety is one more initiative towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, particularly those of reducing hunger and poverty, lowering child sickness and mortality, and strengthening education and sustainable development.
The World Health Organization estimates that there are some 1.2 billion episodes of diarrhoea in the world each year and attributes 2.2 million deaths to contaminated food, of which 1.8 million are of children under the age of five.
In the Americas, acute diarrhoea of bacterial or viral origin continues to be one of the main causes of sickness among all age groups and of mortality among children under the age of five, with a greater incidence among the poor, the vulnerable and the malnourished.
According to data from PAHO's INPPAZ, deaths from contaminated food in Latin America and the Caribbean can be ascribed, in descending order of causative agent, to chemicals, marine toxins, viruses and bacteria. There has been a reported increase in exposure of vulnerable groups, which include the elderly, the immunocompromised, pregnant women, children and infants, and those suffering from malnutrition.
The economic consequences of food-borne diseases and food contamination can be summarized as follows: higher medical expenditure, lower productivity of country and individuals, greater food losses, reduction in international and national food trade and a decline in tourism, the latter being of particular relevance to Costa Rica.
Food safety: a challenge for public health
Costa Rica has registered a significant fall in diarrhoea-related deaths: from 131 reported cases in 1995 to 93 in 2004, a reduction in level from 3.9% to 2.19%.
Sample investigations of 17 deaths from diarrhoea in 2001 revealed that 71% were due to shigella flexneri, ascaris lumbricoides, salmonella typhimurium, enterogenic escherichia coli, aeromonas hydrophila, rotavirus or microsporidium, while studies of 16 outbreaks in 2003 revealed that 25% were from food contamination, 18.75% from water and 56.25% indeterminate. The agents were shigella 37.5%, salmonella 18.75%, rotavirus 6.25%, escherichia coli 6.25% and entero-pathogens.
Need to regulate and control emerging and reemerging food-borne diseases
The large number of emerging and reemerging diseases is causing increasing concern, especially when these are adopted as biological weapons as in the case of botulism, as is the need to prevent many of them, as in the case of new variant spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) which has caused so much economic damage in the countries of Europe. It is therefore important to improve our understanding of the effects and consequences on public health of food-borne diseases such as meningitis, septicemia, miscarriage, malnutrition and death.
National food safety policies
Costa Rica's food safety policy is enacted by various sectors, including Economy, Agriculture and Health. Its National Health Policy 2002–2006 establishes integrated intersectoral and inter-institutional processes that are geared towards ensuring the availability, equity, access and consumption of safe and nutritious foods in order to prevent diseases related to food. Its National Food and Nutrition Policy 2003–2006, which is directed by the Secretariat of National Food and Nutrition Policy (SEPAN), establishes strategies to promote the consumption of safe and nutritious food and to develop an intersectoral science-based system of food safety and quality control.
I should like, if I may, to put forward a number of recommendations for the consideration of this important FAO/WHO Regional Conference on Food Safety for the Americas and the Caribbean: 1) to create an international food safety system with components relating to regulation, surveillance, research and technology transfer; 2) to initiate international cooperation for the establishment of laboratory and training networks; 3) to determine, at international level, the reference laboratories specialized in emerging and reemerging diseases, employing principles of equity, transparency and scientific rigour; 4) to create an international legal advisory system for the modernization and strengthening of rules and regulations, with an expansion of Codex; and 5) to establish technical cooperation in the development of food safety policies.
I should also like to share with you Costa Rica's experience in having an Inter-Institutional Food Safety Commission (CIIA) and its SEPAN, which are responsible for implementing national food safety policy and which participating countries might find of considerable interest.
I am sure that the outcome of this meeting will help significantly to pool our efforts and to continue improving the national food safety systems of each participating country.
I cannot finish without first extending a heartfelt welcome to the representatives of the 35 countries with us today, to the experts of FAO and WHO and other international organizations, and to the national participants who honour us with their presence.
I wish you every success in this commendable effort to improve the quality of life of the peoples of our region.
Thank you.
