31 January 2003
Who Publishes Guidance To Minimize Terrorist Threats To Food
The World Health Organization (WHO) today published guidance intended to
help national governments establish mechanisms which will minimize
potential terrorists acts against food supplies. The document, entitled
"Terrorist Threats to Food: Guidance for Establishing and Strengthening
Prevention and Response Systems", is available on the Internet.
According to WHO, foodborne agents may be responsible for up to 1.5
million deaths from diarrhoea-related conditions alone worldwide each
year. In industrialized countries, such as the USA, one person in three
may suffer from a foodborne disease annually. Major outbreaks of foodborne
disease and related food safety emergencies are all too frequently
reported, sometimes affecting hundreds of thousands of people and having
enormous impact on trade. While only a few cases of intentional
contamination of food have been proven, the risk of possible terrorist
threats to food should be given serious consideration by public health
authorities and the food industry.
The document examines means of establishing basic prevention, surveillance
and response capacities. Because both unintentionally and deliberately
caused outbreaks of foodborne disease may be managed by many of the same
mechanisms, the WHO recommendations concentrate on working with national
governments on integrating terrorism prevention and response measures into
existing national food safety and disease surveillance programmes.
Preventive measures by governments and the food industry are discussed.
Industry involvement is encouraged from the outset, as the food industry
possesses the primary means and greatest ability to minimize food-related
risks. Existing food safety management programmes can be enhanced, WHO
says, while putting in place appropriate security measures to protect food
production and distribution systems. The document provides suggestions for
specific measures for consideration by industry.
The document provides guidance on strengthening existing communicable
disease control systems to ensure that surveillance systems are
sufficiently sensitive to meet the threat of any food safety emergency. It
emphasizes that the establishment and strengthening of such systems will
have a double benefit - not only will they help address the threat of food
terrorism and other emergencies, they will also increase governments'
capacity to reduce the increasing burden of foodborne illness.
The guidance document emphasizes the need to strengthen existing emergency
alert and response systems by improving links with all relevant agencies
and with the food industry. Many developed and most developing countries
are not yet adequately prepared to deal with a large-scale food safety
emergency. All countries should undertake preparedness and response
planning to be able to cope with food safety emergencies regardless of
their cause. In this regard, the services of various technical programmes
of WHO as well as other organizations that may be of assistance to
countries in addressing this newly emerging public health concern are also
described in the document.
Experts from national agencies in Australia, Germany, Ireland, Japan,
Russia, Spain, United Kingdom, and United States of America, and from
organizations including the European Commission, the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations and the Industry Council for
Development contributed to the development of the document. The document
was prepared in collaboration with the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health. (keralamonitor.com)
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