World Food Safety Day 2025: FAO partners with Eswatini to enhance food safety governance

Mbabane, 07 June 2025 – On the occasion of World Food Safety Day, celebrated under the theme “Food Safety: Science in Action”, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is highlighting its collaboration with the Kingdom of Eswatini under the ACE Programme – Governing for Sustainable Agrifood Systems: Strengthening Legislation and Building Capacity to Support Implementation, Compliance and Enforcement. This programme is designed to strengthen food safety legislation and build institutional capacity for effective agrifood systems. This initiative underscores the urgency of enhancing food safety governance as countries face increasing challenges related to public health, trade, and environmental sustainability.

The programme, which began in 2024, aims to support Eswatini in translating food safety and environmental commitments into effective national laws. With close collaboration between the FAO and Eswatini's designated national task team, significant strides are being made to empower stakeholders involved in food safety governance, ensuring that legal frameworks are not only established but also implemented and enforceable effectively.

“Strengthening food safety legislation is critical for safeguarding public health and fostering sustainable development, we need to remember that food safety is a collective right and responsibility – everyone needs to play their part from civil society, government, private and public sector, and development partners,” said Patrice Talla, FAO Subregional Coordinator for Southern Africa and FAO Representative in Eswatini. “The ACE Programme will enable us to build a cohesive framework that not only integrates food safety, environmental protection, and trade opportunities, but also strengthens national institutional capacity for effective implementation, compliance and enforcement of food safety laws. This will ultimately empower communities and enhance livelihoods,” he added.

Legislation and institutions as a cornerstone of food safety

Ensuring food safety requires not only sound legal frameworks, but also effective institutions with clear mandates, as well as appropriate human and technical capacity. Effective implementation, compliance and enforcement further depend on structured coordination between competent authorities, accessible procedures, appropriate participation mechanisms and adequate resourcing.

The programme reflects this year’s World Food Safety Day theme by applying scientific and legal tools to support stronger governance. It introduces regulatory impact assessments (RIAs) to evaluate whether laws achieve their intended outcomes and incorporates behavioural insights to promote compliance and awareness. This includes identifying opportunities to further enhance legal provisions, clarify institutional responsibilities, and align regulatory instruments with international reference standards and good practices in the areas of food safety, animal health and environmental protection under a One Health approach - consistently with Eswatini’s national development objectives.

Globally, food safety saves lives. It is not only a crucial component to food security, but it also plays a vital role in reducing foodborne disease. Every year, 600 million people fall sick as a result of around 200 different types of foodborne illness. The burden of such illness falls most heavily on the poor and on the young. In addition, foodborne illness is responsible for 420 000 preventable deaths every year. Africa experiences a heavy burden of foodborne diseases, with an estimated 91 million people affected and 137,000 deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Eswatini, in particular, faces high levels of acute food insecurity, with a significant portion of the population experiencing crisis or emergency situations.

In Eswatini, the programme is designing targeted capacity-building activities for enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judicial actors. These efforts aim to support clear and uniform enforcement practices, enhance understanding of legal frameworks, and contribute to the fair and predictable application of the law. To ensure sustainability, the programme includes the development of training-of-trainers modules and digital learning tools to support long-term institutional learning and adaptation.

The programme, seeks to achieve several key outputs by the end of 2025, which includes:

• Development of comprehensive legal and institutional assessments.
• Identification of opportunities to enhance legal provisions and clarify institutional responsibilities.
• Alignment of regulatory instruments with international good practices.
• Creation of training-of-trainers modules and digital learning tools for long-term institutional capacity.
• Implementation of regulatory impact assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of laws.
• Promotion of compliance through behavioral insights and awareness initiatives.
• Establishment of structured coordination among competent authorities for better enforcement.
• Development of a national task team to guide legal consultations and participatory engagement to strengthen stakeholder ownership.
  

Advancing the SDGs and FAO’s Strategic Objectives

Eswatini’s participation in the ACE Programme contributes directly to several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production), and SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions). It also aligns with FAO’s Strategic Framework 2022–31, emphasizing food safety, One Health and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

By the end of the initiative, Eswatini is expected to have successfully addressed key legal reform priorities and delivered targeted training to strengthen implementation, compliance, and enforcement capacities. The programme aims not only to create robust frameworks but also to promote accountability and safeguard public health.

The broader objective of the programme is to ensure that food safety frameworks are not only well-designed but also actively applied—supporting accountability, protecting public health, and reinforcing national development goals. As scientific knowledge continues to guide global responses to food safety risks, FAO remains committed to supporting Eswatini in translating science into coherent and actionable legal measures.