WHO alerts on growing threat of unsafe food

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that eating food contaminated with bugs leads to more than half a billion cases of illness a year and that this global threat contributed to 351,000 deaths in 2010.

The WHO in a statement ahead of tomorrow’s World Health Day 2015, said new data on the harm caused by foodborne illnesses underscore the global threats posed by unsafe foods, and the need for coordinated, cross-border action across the entire food supply chain.

The World Health Day will be celebrated tomorrow , with the WHO highlighting the challenges and opportunities associated with food safety under the slogan “From farm to plate, make food safe.”

WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, said: “Food production has been industrialized and its trade and distribution have been globalized. These changes introduce multiple new opportunities for food to become contaminated with harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites, or chemicals.”

“A local food safety problem can rapidly become an international emergency. Investigation of an outbreak of foodborne disease is vastly more complicated when a single plate or package of food contains ingredients from multiple countries.”

According to the WHO, unsafe food can contain harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances, and cause more than 200 diseases – ranging from diarrhoea to cancers. Examples of unsafe food include undercooked foods of animal origin, fruits and vegetables contaminated with faeces, and shellfish containing marine biotoxins.

WHO said it is issuing the first findings from what is a broader ongoing analysis of the global burden of foodborne diseases and that the full results of this research, being undertaken by WHO’s Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG), are expected to be released in October 2015.

According to the statement from WHO, some important results are related to enteric infections caused by viruses, bacteria and protozoa that enter the body by ingestion of contaminated food.

The initial FERG figures, from 2010, show that: there were an estimated 582 million cases of 22 different foodborne enteric diseases and 351 000 associated deaths; the enteric disease agents responsible for most deaths were Salmonella Typhi (52 000 deaths), enteropathogenic E. coli (37 000) and norovirus (35 000); the African region recorded the highest disease burden for enteric foodborne disease, followed by South-East Asia; and over 40 per cent people suffering from enteric diseases caused by contaminated food were children aged under five years.

The statement reads: “Unsafe food also poses major economic risks, especially in a globalized world. Germany’s 2011 E.coli outbreak reportedly caused US$ 1.3 billion in losses for farmers and industries and US$ 236 million in emergency aid payments to 22 European Union Member States.

“Efforts to prevent such emergencies can be strengthened, however, through development of robust food safety systems that drive collective government and public action to safeguard against chemical or microbial contamination of food. Global and national level measures can be taken, including using international platforms, like the joint WHO-Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN), to ensure effective and rapid communication during food safety emergencies.