Ahead of the sixth World Food Safety Day, which this year is to be held on 7th June, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) have published a communications toolkit. 

World Food Safety Day is jointly facilitated by the FAO and the World Health Organization (WHO) and aims to draw attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect and manage foodborne risks, contributing to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agriculture, market access, tourism and sustainable development. 

This year’s theme is ‘Food safety: prepare for the unexpected’ and issues a reminder that food safety is a collective responsibility with everyone from producers to consumers needing to play their part to ensure the food on our plates will be safe.  

More than 600 million people fall ill and 420 000 die every year after eating contaminated food. These illnesses and these deaths are largely preventable if food safety is prioritised along the food chain, from the producer to the consumer. 

The communications toolkit can be downloaded here  

Food Standards Scotland’s (FSS) have recently published their Strategy to 2026 which sets out a vision for a safe, healthy and sustainable food environment that benefits and protects the health and well-being of everyone in Scotland.  

Three of the priority outcomes are that Food is Safe and Authentic, responsible food businesses are able to thrive and FSS is trusted and influential. 

The strategy sets out a framework for the analysis of information and data in relation to food and feed incidents with the aim of identifying effective long term preventative actions. An integral part of this is the sharing of information and learning between FSS, industry and key stakeholders.  

FSS will look to identify potential issues through horizon scanning coupled with identifying common themes, best practice and lessons learned from incidents as well as utilising information and intelligence shared by industry. This strategy will take cognisance of other incident prevention work elsewhere in the UK and around the world to help ensure the furthest reaching data sets feed into FSS analysis and preventative action. 

You can read more here