In a world where we remain concerned with increasing food supply, little attention has gone to a major issue: food contamination. In the last few years, Pakistan has been amongst the countries to undertake campaigns against unhygienic food supply, but the fear that this is only the tip of the iceberg lingers. The UN has recently hosted a two-day forum for officials from 125 countries to discuss the issue of food safety. Unsafe food is a regular feature in the market place. Contamination has many forms, including biological and chemical. Dangerous bacteria and toxic chemicals are both present in much of the world’s food supplies. The UN has estimated that unsafe food kills over 400,000 people per year. In the US alone, unsafe food caused over 48 million infections last year. If the numbers are so high in the first world, how poor will the situation in the developing world be? The issue of food safety is one that cannot be pushed to aside.
It is not an easy one to resolve either. If the developed world is seeing more food recalls than ever before due to contamination, there is little hope that the developing world can do better. Perhaps there is a need to revisit the principles via which food is produced, stored and distributed today. Commercial practices have replaced small-scale food production. Animals, vegetables, and grains are all mass produced today. This is leading to a situation where, in principle, there is enough food for everyone, but there is not enough safe food for everyone. Nearly one in 10 persons falls sick after eating contaminated food. This means that almost 600 million people in the world fall sick from eating unsafe food. Children under five make up around 40 percent of these. Contaminated food is to blame for over 200 diseases, including cancers. Solving the problem of food safety will require a holistic approach, including stronger laws, better enforcement and putting a halt to contamination at source. It is clear that how commercial practices have dealt with food have left much to be desired. We will need to do more now to curb the issue of food safety.