In December 2018, the UN General Assembly, by its resolution (A / RES / 73/250), proclaimed on June 7 World Food Safety Day (World Food Safety Day).
The goals facing the international community in achieving the process of sustainable development of mankind are inextricably linked with the issues of healthy and nutritious nutrition, overcoming not only the problem of hunger in certain regions of the Earth, but also achieving the principles of a healthy lifestyle, including through ensuring food safety.
Food safety must be ensured all the way from the place of growth and production to the human table. It should take into account the factors of safe use of fertilizers and pest control agents at the stage of growing cereals, legumes, fruits and vegetables and berries, safe production of meat products, poultry and fish, methods of their proper storage and transportation, as well as processing during cooking or eating. At any of these stages, the products eaten or used for its preparation can become a source of danger to human health if the established rules of production, transportation, storage or proper preparation are violated. This hazard is predominantly microbiological or chemical in nature.
A separate problem of food safety is the culture of cooking and the process of eating food, when the consumer himself violates the natural norms of hygiene, proper nutrition and the basic basic principles of transportation, storage and preparation of food for consumption.
All these problems cause significant harm to human health, in some regions they pose a serious threat to him or are of a systematic nature.
According to the World Health Organization, about 3 million people die every year from foodborne infections and foodborne diseases in the world, and the number of registered diseases of this origin is about 600 million cases per year. This primarily concerns developing countries, as well as the category of marginalized groups, migrants in countries with developed economies.
It was WHO, together with FAO, who initiated the establishment of World Food Safety Day, since they have the most complete information and statistics on diseases caused by food, food poisoning, and also supervise those spheres of society that are related to food production and the provision of medical services.
Establishing this World Day, the UN set itself the task of drawing the attention of states to the problems of healthy nutrition of the population, as well as the quality of food products. The appeal is addressed both to the authorities and to food producers and workers in the sphere of their marketing (farmers, agricultural workers, food industry workers and trade workers).
Among the proposed measures to overcome the problems caused by violations of food safety are such measures as strengthening government control over the processes of growing, collecting, producing, transporting, storing and selling food, improving the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of foodborne diseases and increasing quality information and education on health and nutrition.
Concern about the problem prompted FAO and WHO, together with the African Union Commission, to host the First International Conference on Food Safety in 2019, which took place in February 2019 in Addis Ababa.