By Henry Owino
Nairobi, Kenya: Food safety is central to public health, food security, and improved livelihoods through trade facilitation and sustainable development. The need to put in place stringent regulations and guidelines to ascertain such protection for the wellbeing has been defective.
This is despite the Constitution of Kenya 2010 which allows for access to safe food as a fundamental right prescribed in Article 43. It sets provisions regarding safety, cleanliness, and orderliness of food and water for Kenyans. The implementation of this law to the letter has been lacking.
While Article 46 states; Consumers have the right– to goods and services of reasonable quality; to the information necessary for them to gain full benefit from goods and services; to the protection of their health, safety, and economic interests; and to compensation for loss or injury arising from defects in goods or services.
Again, it adds that; Parliament shall enact legislation to provide for consumer protection and for fair, honest, and decent advertising. This Article applies to goods and services offered by public entities or private persons.
Over the years, concerted efforts and initiatives have been directed at addressing the improvement of food safety systems with some degree of success. However, the situation surrounding eating habits in Kenya has changed drastically over the past three years.
New and evolving technologies have been developed and implemented to produce all types of foods with the view of meeting demands for the ever-increasing population, including foods derived from modern biotechnology. The distribution systems have become much broader enhancing accessibility to a wider variety of foods from all over the world.
Other challenges include the emergence of new food-borne pathogens and known pathogens becoming more resistant or vibrant hence increasing susceptibility to food-borne infections.
The document revealed that Government is concerned that several unfortunate events affecting food safety have occurred in the past. This, coupled with heightened awareness has resulted in increased efforts on mitigation.
“Food Safety by its very nature must be considered one of the shared responsibilities with government, private sector, and public, and making use of robust up to date instruments to control management,” the policy document emphasized.
The policy is carefully formulated considering the five pillars of Food Safety and Control Management namely; Food Law, Regulation and Standards, Inspection Services, Laboratory Services, Monitoring, and Training.
It is for these reasons that a team of experts and stakeholders are drawn from various local, regional, and international organizations were appointed to form a Taskforce to spearhead the discussions. The team compromised of policymakers, specialists in handling food for safety and policy-related matters, worked tirelessly around the clock to come up with a working draft document policy.
The majority of members are from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives, Health, Trade, and East Africa Community (EAC) including other relevant agencies. International private sector such as United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)Trade-in Agriculture Safely and Efficiently (TRASE) also brought in expertise that was shared among other resourceful persons as part of the Taskforce.
The Taskforce finally unveiled the drafted National Food Safety Policy at a hotel in Nairobi to officials representing the government, private sector, and the public to scrutinize the document for any possible amendments before submitting to it its Parliament for enactment.
Nevertheless, the Taskforce said they had sorted consultations and public participation from various players to get views adding value to the document. This was achieved through a series of workshops, meetings, retreats, and professional fora involving development partners, private sector groups, communities, and teaching and research institutions.
According to Taskforce, should the document be enacted, it will ensure an effective and efficient food safety system that secures access to safe and quality food for all. Thereby reducing morbidity and mortality rates arising from food-borne illness or diseases and facilitating trade.
“It is expected that all players in the food safety continuum will, therefore, provide the necessary infrastructure for the successful implementation of this National Food Safety Policy. Implementation will be through national food control strategy hence strengthening of food safety infrastructure and institutional frameworks, compliance to food safety requirements,” the policy report suggested.
The policy report proposes that to ensure successful implementation of the policy, there will be continuous training, public education, and awareness creation of stakeholders. The core component of the policy will be driven by the enforcement of appropriate legislation. It is expected to impact key areas such as; Food safety, Public health, Plant health, Animal health, Human Nutrition, and Domestic and International trade.
For ease facilitation so that it trickles to grassroots, respective State Departments responsible for food safety and County Governments, will support review and implementation of legislations, undertake capacity development and ensure enforcement.
The task force involved in collating comments from various players was a team from the top leadership in the respective ministries. The input also came from other levels of government officials such as Committees for Agriculture, Health and Trade in both National Assembly and Senate, the Council of Governors, the County Executive Committee in charge of Agriculture, Health and Trade as well as private sector players at National and County levels.
In general, food safety needs are going to be safeguarded by protecting the food supply chain from production, harvesting processing, transporting, retailing, distribution, preparing, storing, and consumption.
The task force now believes that successful interpretation and implementation of this validated policy document is expected to improve the food safety control in the country leading to health benefits to the citizens. The Government is committed to fully implementing this policy and shall therefore strengthen the respective institutions and provide the needed resources.
