USAID’s Feed the Future Initiative, EatSafe: Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food, has honored this year’s World Food Safety Day (WFSD) with a special focus on food safety standards spanning from local to global. EatSafe's aim is to enable lasting improvements in the safety of nutritious foods in traditional food markets in low- and middle-income countries. To commemorate this year’s WFSD, EatSafe led a series of activities, including thought pieces, events, resources, and even an interview cruncher discussing how food standards can help save lives.

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the lead organization of the EatSafe consortium, kicked off WFSD by emphasizing the linkages between improved nutrition and food safety. Nutrition Connect, an independent initiative of GAIN, featured an EatSafe blog on the necessity of collective action to accomplish goals for safer, nutritious foods.

Several national activities were hosted within EatSafe’s implementing countries, answering WFSD’s call to action for civil society and government representatives to come together in pursuit of improved food safety. In Ethiopia, EatSafe hosted a dynamic and informative workshop in Hawassa, Ethiopia with over 80 participants. The event included speeches by representatives from the Regional Health and Trade and Industry Bureaus, emphasizing the paramount importance of food safety. In Nigeria, the Kebbi and Sokoto Chapters of the Association for Promotion of Food Safety and Improved Nutrition (APFSAN), an independent EatSafe intervention, led various activities for the public. Events included food safety trainings, a road walk for food safety, and mini Food Safety Trade Fairs. Additionally, the State Coordinator of the Kebbi chapter of APSFAN will be a featured speaker on a USAID-hosted Agrilinks webinar (June 28), Tiny Microbes with Big Business Impact: The Economic and Health Implications of Food Safety.

This year marks EatSafe’s fourth year celebrating World Food Safety Day. EatSafe is a consortium led by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and implementing partners International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Pierce Mill, and Busara Center for Behavioral Science.

Photo © GAIN