Food Safety Day marked

Islamabad:The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), in partnership with the National Alliance for Safe Food (NAFS) and Islamabad Food Authority, successfully led Pakistan’s national commemoration of World Food Safety Day 2025 under the theme ‘Food Safety: Science in Action.’ The event brought together key stakeholders from government, regulatory authorities, the food industry, academia, and civil society to highlight the importance of food safety in ensuring public health and sustainable development.

Farrah Naz, GAIN Pakistan Country Director, opened the event by welcoming participants and insisting collective action was needed for greater institutional investment in food safety. Faiz Rasool, head of Policy & Advocacy at GAIN, informed the audience about the global and national statistics on the burden of foodborne diseases. He stated that about 600 million people fall ill each year and around 420,000 die. In Pakistan, more than 33 million cases of diarrhoea are reported per year; 40% are attributed to unsafe food, costing the country more than $1.7 billion (in terms of impact on productivity) per annum. He informed that since 2013, GAIN has been offering technical assistance to provincial and federal food safety authorities in capacity building of inspectors and lab staff, support for lab accreditation, FBO training, and consumer awareness campaigns.

Shafqat Hussain, Deputy Secretary at the Ministry of National Food Security & Research and focal person for food systems transformation, acknowledged the role GAIN has played. He briefed that GAIN is currently providing support to the Ministry on the review of the Pakistan National Food Security Policy 2018, and a National Steering Committee and Technical Working Groups will be notified to provide guidance to this process in collaboration with provinces and stakeholders. In the lead-up to the main event, GAIN and NAFS is organising a series of capacity-building training workshops.