Tuesday (7 April) marked World Health Day 2015. The focus of this year’s international day was on food safety. Intergovernmental organisations highlighted the need to tackle food safety challenges that have arisen as a result of globalisation and changing patterns of consumption.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), which organised the event, used the day as an opportunity to promote food safety at national and regional levels through a range of different actions and events across the globe.

Representatives of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and WHO met with French Agriculture minister Stefane Le Foll, members of the French Food Safety Agency and corporate leaders at Rungis International Market near Paris to launch the international day on Tuesday morning.  

On World Health Day, the OIE said the growing demand for meat and other animal products around the world presents a number of challenges, and that the advent of globalisation means all countries have a responsibility to ensure food safety. According to OIE, the Day presented the perfect opportunity to emphasise the importance of its one health approach, ensuring that animal health, environment and public health bodies work together, to improve the fight against disease, antibiotic resistance and food-borne illness, and ensure that the work of one policy area does not undermine the others.

OIE also called for a focus on prevention - on addressing food safety risks on farms before slaughter and processing - rather than reactive methods, or looking at the safety of finished food products.

In a number of countries, like France, the Veterinary Services take care of food safety along the whole food chain, at farm level, abattoir level, during transportation, distribution level and up to restaurant level. OIE director general Dr Bernard Vallat said, “The existence of well-trained veterinary services, supported by governance structures, legislation and adequate human and financial resources is a pre-requisite to guaranteeing the security of food of animal origin.”

However, Dr Vallat added that it is “regrettable” that over 100 countries worldwide still do not have adequate food safety legislation in place.

Dr Vallat added, “Crises like the Ebola virus epidemic, or alerts related to antibiotic resistance are also alarm bells which, on a daily basis, highlight the major importance of strengthening national health systems, both human and animal.”

He praised WHO for the holistic focus of World Health Day, which he said “Brought together all the food safety players, integrating human, animal, agricultural and environmental dimensions”.