Radio Miraya
2749: MBS: Food Safety Day
Today is the World Food Safety Day and according to WFP, this year the day will draw attention to food safety, incidents and this has been underlined, the importance of being prepared for food safety, incidents no matter how mild or severe they can be. Food safety incidents are situations where there is a potential or confirmed health risk associated with food consumption, a food incident can also happen, for example due to accidents in adequate controls, food fraud or natural events. While being ready to manage food safety, incidents require dedicated efforts from policy makers, food safety authorities, farmers and food business operators, consumers also can play an active role. Now to talk more about this day, in the context of Southstan, we are joined in the studio by the Bureau of Standards, the Acting Director of Quality Assurance Teller. Joanne, good morning and welcome to the program. Thank you. I am so grateful that I am presenting South State National Bureau of Standards in Mirai FM. Right, so I am so grateful. Okay, welcome. So what is the significance of World Food Safety Day and why is it important to focus on food safety incidents this year? It's so important, the kind of the food safety because there is a lot of things that come relative to the food that affect the life of the human beings anymore as a plant. Okay. Right, do we have such cases in South Sudan? Yeah, South Sudan is a part of San Francisco, one of the governmental organizations or institutions that mandate or charge to implement standards, confirm it assessment and technical regulations. So some time, Paul doesn't produce the food or the food don't come in the channel of the standard regulations. So a standard here, National Bureau of Standards have to come in so that they provide and regulate the food in the channel of the meeting the specifications to make it healthy, to make it safe for consumers. Okay. So what are some of the biggest challenges facing this food safety in South Sudan and how can these challenges be addressed? There's a lot of challenges for food to be safety. According to National Bureau of Standards, first we start with the inspection of the food, which is not enough, which is cannot give us that green light that the food is safe. We proceed on by taking it for tests, laboratory tests, that is where we justify it, it's scientifically that the food is safe for consumption. Those challenges, there's a lot of challenges that facing food safety, like some of the micro-goalism in food need to be tested, and then some time there is lack of equipment, there is lack of resources for the equipment for testing this food. And then also some time regions, when the regions are not there, all these come to the problem of resources by effort, because we don't produce the reagents and equipment in South Sudan by bringing them from outside. So it's very important that we put the lack of equipment and all these in so that we proceed with the testing in order for us to ensure that it's scientifically that the food is safety. Okay. So what is the equipment? We have the equipment, and then some time the reagents are not there due to some lack of resources, as I mentioned, tough for the reagents. But Bill is trying the best to put it as a government of South Sudan also, sometimes they provide that. It's only that due to economic crisis, sometimes things cannot work out very quick, but we ensure that we are trying our best to put it there. The other point is training of the luck technicians. As we know, the technology is advancing every now and then. So the technicians in luck, they need to be trained or the capacity to be built by training them in order to cope up with the technology. Some equipment are modified, so they have to come up to be trained well so that they can also know how to operate the equipment or the advanced or the technological equipment. And then we have the consumer's knowledge. The big challenge here is that most of the consumers in South Sudan, they are not aware of this food safety, so they need more awareness to be done. And this awareness for food safety, like we have to do it through the medias, newspapers, televisions, even to the accident that we go to the route down there to talk to them and make them aware of the food safety. And then the knowledge is very important. The second thing is that in future, the challenge is that the food safety needs to be introduced even to the level of the schools, academia, so that people can come up with the safety of the food. The other challenge is that even the producer or the company, that processing food, those handles foods, distributing foods, they need to be educated and then they need to be trained. How do they meet the standard for the food to be safety? So that even they have the necessary knowledge and then they scale for the food safety. The other thing is that the challenge is that sometime the body needs to be regulated so that the food doesn't smog and eat, whether it's not meeting the standard or it's not inspected, checked, tested, all this process. So has this been happening where food is being smuggled in? Sometimes because the water is not well-regulated, sometimes it's also for cooperation with the organizing bodies in South Sudan whereby if that kind of happens, the contact or address it to zero in order for them because there is only body that mandate dealing with the standard of the food. Right. So what message would you like to give to listeners about the importance of food safety and how they can get involved in promoting food safety in South Sudan? The message from the bureau is that the responsibility of the bureau or the work of the bill is not a lie only or the bureau alone but it's a cooperation or the training work to make a food safety whereby even consumers, anything that they find is not safe or the food because sometimes you go for buying food in a store, you can also notify some of the things as a consumer. This is whereby you don't take action because you don't have that mandate but there's a body like a bureau standard whereby you inform or you contact the concerned body so that there is a measure to be taken or send some inspector to go there and call up whatever and then sometime you go to the concern about the temperature of those food being installed like in fridge, in the markets, you have to know. So it is important that foods are stored under regulated temperatures? Temperature. Yeah. All right. So what happens when the temperatures are not regulated? When the temperature is not regulated, that is whereby it comes in that the food is not safe. Right. By example, when we put the yogurt, the yogurt is supposed to be in the fridge and it's a den temperature. So if the temperature is not there, this you've got some time you find it is keeping on fermenting whereby there's a lot of gazis and then even the test chain, the color chain which make it not suitable for you. Right. Is there anything else you'd like to add about the world food safety day? Yeah. Yeah. Let's go right ahead. Yeah. I want the cities and all the consumer of South Sudan to cooperate and then also the whole country have to cooperate in this case of food safety whereby if you are not, it doesn't mean that if you found anything that related to food safety, you take the action. You concern, concern the site that is mandated, then they will take the measure. This is whereby, at least we will improve it. And then this was being happening, but now we are trying and then it is coming up and then improving. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Stella, join.