A side event was held on the margins of the 47th session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission on Tuesday, 26 November 2024, titled “Consumer food safety education and advocacy including through digital platforms: opportunities and challenges.” The event, which was organized by Switzerland and moderated by Awilo Ochieng Pernet of the Swiss Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office, heard from seven Codex Members about their experiences in developing tools to effectively communicate about and promote food safety awareness among consumers.

Speakers from Canada, Chile, China, the European Union, India, Kenya and the United States of America each described the campaigns they have developed, the approaches and thinking behind them and the challenges they faced in effectively reaching out to their target populations. While these Codex Members represent various regions of the world and have widely varying food safety, quality and control systems, they each described very similar challenges and, broadly, very similar channels of communication, with the Internet and social media increasingly becoming the primary means of reaching out to consumers.

Evelyne Mbandi, Director, Microbiological and Chemical Hazards Staff, Office of Public Health Science, Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), presented the Federal Government’s approach to consumer food safety education in the United States of America. Highlighting FSIS’s mission of ensuring that meat, poultry and egg products are safe, wholesome and properly labelled in order to protect public health, she further gave an overview of FSIS consumer education activities, which are carried out through various means, including communication campaigns, social media, traditional media and digital placements, factsheets and publications, outreach events as well as the live and online customer service options via the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline. She summarized the three major challenges that the FSIS has to confront, which are: ensuring consumer trust in communications from the Federal Government; considering consumer risk perceptions; and the rapidly changing ways in how consumers prefer to be informed about food safety.

Maritim Kimutai, Director of Regulatory Services, Kenya Dairy Board, focused on raising awareness about food safety in the Kenyan dairy sector. He highlighted the key institutions, which are responsible for regulating the safety and quality of the dairy produce in Kenya and he further presented some of the consumer education programmes undertaken by the Kenya Dairy Board in collaboration with the relevant ministries, county governments and other stakeholders including consumer organizations. He described a campaign targeted at the entire milk supply chain, where standards are improving, although he stressed that with 60 percent of the sector functioning at an informal level, awareness about safety and standards needed to grow among producers and processors, as well as consumers. He further indicated that consumer education programmes were disseminated not only online, but also in print media and in-person activities such as roadshows, field days, exhibitions and cooking demonstrations.

Alka Rao, Adviser, Science, Standards and Regulations, Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) presented India’s unique setting and demography as a foundation for diverse food safety initiatives. She highlighted, among others, the “Eat Right India” initiative, which was launched in 2018 to help ensure the availability of safe, wholesome and sustainable food across India in an environmentally sustainable way. The three pillars of the “Eat Right India” initiative are: Eat Safe; Eat Healthy and Eat Sustainable. She noted that India’s “Eat Right” initiative also aimed to tackle issues of malnutrition and of foodborne disease. She drew attention to India’s 3E model (Engage, Excite, Enable) to raise consumer food safety awareness by various stakeholders. She also presented India’s social and behavioural change campaigns, Food Safety on Wheels Mobile Testing Labs and India’s digital approach to consumer food safety education, among others. Finally, she noted that “India is deeply committed to enhancing food safety standards domestically and to contributing to the vital international dialogue on this issue.”

Judit Krommer from the European Commission’s Directorate General of Health and Food Safety (DG Sante) welcomed this timely side event and made the point that “it is really important that we share information and listen to each other on what is happening in different parts of the world”. She focussed on two of the European Commission’s major initiatives to raise consumer awareness: the “Safe2Eat” 2024 campaign as well as the campaign to raise awareness about antimicrobial resistance (AMR). She presented the three “Safe2Eat” themes: What’s in your food; Food and your health and Handling food safety. Krommer presented the current AMR campaign, which also features a Fortnite Game and Tournament “Only Up, Beat the Bug” aimed at “inspiring young heroes to use antibiotics wisely and to rise against superbug resistance”.

It is really important that we share information and experiences about consumer food safety education and learn about the best practices from different parts of the world. - Maritim Kimutai

 Wang Ke, Deputy Manager of the Shenzhen Institute of Standards and Technology (SIST) in China, presented the “Little Hands in Big Hands” Building Food Safety Education and Advocacy approach, which has led to the significant SIST Team growth based on the Codes developed by Codex. He also highlighted the Youth Food Education Project, which focuses on food safety, nutrition, culture and other themes. He indicated that the very innovative education model “little hands holding big hands means students motivating family members to learn”. Furthermore, he presented the Shenzhen Food Safety Forum, which has established itself over the past eight years as an internationally recognized annual food safety event and which draws numerous eminent experts and participants from all over the world. Finally, Wang ke presented the Zhenpin Shenzhen Food City Brand, which ensures that consumers are presented with food products which comply with the prescribed high food safety and quality standards.

Diego Varela, outgoing Codex Vice-Chairperson and Executive Secretary of the Chilean Agency for Food Safety and Quality (ACHIPIA), spoke of a more analytical approach to assessing how to promote food safety in Chile, whereby ACHIPIA starts by asking “why communicate about food safety”. He stressed the fact that competent authorities have to develop trust with consumers through constant and regular food safety communication and advocacy and not only communicate about food safety in times of a crisis. Varela made the point that food safety advocacy and education are important in order to protect consumers’ health, save lives and to reduce fear and anxiety. This also contributes to changing perceptions among consumers in order to change the food choices that they make and to ultimately enable them to change their food consumption behaviours. He described a focus on emotional engagement through music and games. “Try to connect to be remembered,” he said.

Meghan Quinlan, Manager for International Affairs and Codex Contact Point for Canada at Health Canada, presented Health Canada’s food safety education and outreach activities, which continue to promote healthy food safety behaviours as norms, thereby promoting simple actions for Canadians to integrate into their day-to-day lives. She stressed the fact that the main focus was on the four key behaviours (clean, separate, cook and chill), which could help reduce foodborne illness. She further highlighted Health Canada’s food safety education and outreach activities which include online food safety courses for health professionals and educators, food safety courses for school-aged children, a safe recipe style guide, optimised web content and social media products as well as an updated food safety marketing campaign. She also noted that the Internet had become the main source of information on food safety for Canadians. Finally, among the ongoing challenges, she highlighted the fast-changing digital landscape, digital inclusion as well as accessibility.

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CAC47 webpage