Food safety should focus on weather changes, population growth: Harrison

Minister P. Harrison said any programme on food safety should focus attention on climatic and weather changes and the increasing population.

Addressing the conference on Food Safety and Sustainable Agriculture organised by the French Embassy yesterday in Colombo, he pointed out that Sri Lanka had a long history of irrigation and protecting the natural equilibrium. He said there could be no other country which paid more attention to this aspect than Sri Lanka.

“Our irrigation system is akin to that of the most ancient civilization in the world. The policy of our kings was to use every drop of water that falls from the sky. Water flowed into the sea only after making maximum use of it for agriculture. Today we are facing serious environmental issues. We used to eat poison free food in the past. However, today we import about 40,000 metric tonnes of fertilizer and about 20,000 metric tonnes of agrochemicals which are then used on crops,” he said.

He further said that more than 40 per cent of vegetables and fruits are destroyed for want of effective food safety methods.