A focus on food safety

02/03/2022

With some 600 million cases of foodborne illnesses every year, unsafe food is a threat to human health and economies around the world. Ensuring food safety is a public health priority and an essential step to achieving food security.

FAO is the only international organization overseeing all aspects of the food chain, providing a 360° vision on food safety.

As the World Food Safety Day 2022 campaign kicks off, brush up your knowledge on the topic with a selection of FAO publications.

For more titles, browse the Publications catalogue.

JUST PUBLISHED: Thinking about the future of food safety: A foresight report
This publication provides an overview of major global drivers and trends and their implications for food safety and agrifood systems, including climate change, changing consumer behaviour and preferences, new food sources and production systems, technological advances, microbiome, circular economy and food fraud.

Microbiological risk assessment – Guidance for good
This document provides guidance on risk assessment for all microbial hazards that may adversely affect human health along the food chain, focusing on hazard identification, hazard characterization, exposure assessment and risk characterization.

Guide to World Food Safety Day 2022
This fourth annual World Food Safety Day seeks to help prevent, detect and manage foodborne risks, contributing to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agricultural production, market access, tourism and sustainable development.

World Food Safety Day 2021 − Overview of festivity and creativity
In this summary, we take a glimpse at the webinars, videos, press conferences, media coverage, contests, social media posts and campaigns that involved millions of people across the world in May and June 2021.

Foodborne antimicrobial resistance. Compendium of Codex standards 
This publication brings together the three Codex texts, two guidelines and a code of practice, that will support governments in designing and running a successful strategy to tackle foodborne AMR. 

Food safety and COVID-19-related resources

Additional reading