Significance and all you need to know

World Food Safety Day is celebrated on June 7 every year. It aims to draw attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect and manage foodborne risks, contributing to food security, human health, and sustainable development.

It is important to eat safely as foodborne illnesses are usually infectious or toxic in nature and often invisible to the plain eye. It is caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances entering the body through contaminated food or water.

Food Safety is ensuring that food is safe through every stage — from production to harvest, processing, storage, distribution, all the way to preparation and consumption. Food Safety is a shared responsibility between gover nments, producers and consumers. Everybody has a role to play from far m to table to ensure the food we consume is safe and will not cause damages to our health.

Through World Food Safety Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) pursues it's efforts to mainstream food safety in the public agenda and reduce the burden of foodborne diseases globally.

Unsafe food containing harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites or chemical substances causes more than 200 diseases.

Good hygiene practices in the food and agricultural sectors help to reduce the emergence and spread of foodborne diseases. It is more important now than ever that we treat ourselves with care by only consuming healthy products that can build our immunity, so that we can live healthy and happy lives.