FAO empowers key stakeholders with skills for ensuring food safety and customer protection

Mr. Atanda John, the National Coordinator, Food Safety and Quality Programme in the Federal Ministry of Health delivering opening remarks at the workshop on behalf of the Federal Minister of Health who is the Chairman of the National Codex Committee (NCC)

06/08/2021

Abuja - Key stakeholders from Nigeria’s National Codex Committee (NCC) attended a briefing session in Abuja on Codex Alimentarius - a collection of international standards, guidelines, codes of practice, and related texts for promoting global food safety standards. Codex standards are aimed at protecting consumers’ health, coordinating of all food standards work and promoting access to a suitable and fair global markets for economic development. These would impact the agricultural production system and value chain to ameliorate the risks to consumers’ health, food producers, processors, importers/exporters and the economy.

The briefing session aimed to sensitize policy makers and managers in Nigeria on NCC roles on ensuring food safety and quality for consumer protection, facilitation of trade and economic development and to strengthen technical capacities of NCC members, for national standards and regulatory agencies, farmers, processors, industry, universities and research institutions. It also targets to build scientific and technical capacities to generate science-based data to support national positions on elaboration/review of national and international quality and safety standards and regulations.

The Codex Alimentarius is a joint partnership between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) with the objective of building countries’ capacity in order to effectively participate in the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC) through which the international food safety standards are established.

At the moment, FAO is providing technical support to Nigeria in the identification of priority areas and capacity strengthening for more active participation and contribution to Codex Alimentarius work at national, regional and global levels. The aim is to help the country to avert negative implications on agricultural production system and value chain including risks to consumers’ health, food producers, processors, importers/exporters and the economy as a whole.