ICAR-Central Institute of Fisheries Technology, Cochin, which is notified as ‘National Referral Laboratory on Fish and Fishery Products’ by FSSAI, celebrated the World Food Safety Day on 07 June 2019. The day was observed by ICAR-CIFT in response to a resolution passed during 40th Session of the FAO Conference in July 2017 in support of a World Food Safety Day and further in December 2018 as per the decision of UN General Assembly to designate 7thJune as World Food Safety Day from 2019 onwards.The theme for this years’ World Food Safety Day was "Food Safety, everyone's business".
At the outset, Director, ICAR-CIFT administered pledge to all staff members of the institute for promoting safe food and prevent food borne risks. Inaugurating the programme, Director of the Institute,Dr. Ravishankar C.N. exhorted the audience for upholding the tenets of food safety in daily life. He further stressed that food security cannot exist without food safety. He said, food safety is a collective responsibility of not only government, food producers and industries, but the consumers should also take the onus of maintaining the status in order to achieve food security. It is imperative to comply with global food standards, establish effective regulatory food control systems, provide access to clean water, apply good agriculture practices and strengthen the use of food safety management systems by food business operators. Further, he stressed that consumers should be made aware about the healthy food choices and apprehensions of the unsafe food.
Later, the video films on DART (Detecting Adulterants with Rapid Testing)developed by FSSAI for rapid detection of adulterants in household food items were screened before the audience for creating awareness about the methods to detect the food contamination in our daily life. The programme was followed by an informative talk by Dr. M. M. Prasad, Head, Microbiology, Fermentation & Biotechnology Division on‘Advances in Microbial Safety of Foods’. Dr. Prasad highlighted the emerging concepts like dysbiosis, “order from noise” and underlying relationship between microbiome & human health. Sessions ended with appreciation to FSSAI for such a wonderful initiative on Food Safety. Scientists and all the staff of the institute participated in the programme.
