-food safety high on the agenda
GOVERNMENT, through the Ministry of Agriculture, will be accelerating efforts to achieve growth in the agriculture sector in 2020 and beyond.
This is according to Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder. He was delivering remarks during an Interfaith Service held on Sunday to usher in Agriculture Month, which begins on October 1, 2019.
“This is an inspirational time for transformational change…we need to continue working as one nation… the ministry will be accelerating efforts to achieve growth in 2020 and beyond,” Minister Holder said.
Going forward, the Agriculture Ministry will be placing significant focus on food safety and food and nutrition security.
“We have a responsibility to feed our nation, while being a food-secure nation…we were blessed with all the resources to achieve both food and nutrition security,” said Holder, adding that the requirements for food safety get higher each year.
Although there are many challenges to achieving food security, he said, if agriculture plays a central role in the “green” economy, the country can get closer to achieving the long, overdue international goal of eradicating hunger.
According to the United Nations (UN), there is no food security without food safety. In a world where the food supply chain has become more complex, any adverse food-safety incident may have global, negative effects on public health, trade and the economy.
The UN said that the global burden of food-borne diseases is considerable; it affects individuals of all ages, in particular children under five years of age and persons living in low-income regions of the world.
In that regard, Minister Holder said Guyana needs to look at how to produce the food needed for consumption, how to eat healthily and how to live on a sustainable planet at a time when not just Guyana, but the world is facing the negative effects of climate change and the loss of biodiversity.
Holder believes that the systematic issues related to climate change are not unique to Guyana, but they are international issues which are being addressed through the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
“Those goals include goal 12 which is the sustainable production and consumption of food,” said the minister.
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Government has already taken steps towards achieving that goal by promoting food safety and food security in Guyana. Among those steps was the passage of the Food Safety Bill in the National Assembly during May 2019.
One of the strategies aligned with the bill was the operationalisation of a Food Safety Authority; government has been allocating greater technical and financial support towards the establishment of the authority, which would coordinate food safety in Guyana.
“The Food Safety Authority will play a pivotal role in developing policies and a regulatory framework and establishing and implementing effective food-safety systems that ensure that food producers and suppliers along the whole food chain operate responsibly and supply safe food to consumers,” said Minister Holder.
The Food Safety Authority will be responsible for ensuring that all agricultural produce, whether produced locally or imported, are of the highest quality and are produced under the strictest hygienic conditions and are not capable of causing harm to the consumer.
With these systems in place, Guyana will see its food-safety requirements meeting internationally acceptable standards, thereby opening up both regional and international markets for locally grown produce, while also ensuring that not only the best, but a greater variety of raw products are available for local agro-processors.
Minister Holder said government intends speaking more about the importance of food safety during the celebration of World Food Fay on Wednesday, October 16, 2019. World Food Safety Day will be celebrated under the theme, ‘Our actions are our future, healthy diets for a zero-hunger world.’
“On this day we will reinforce our commitment to safe food and healthy diets and the importance of food safety,” he said.