Making food safety an Asia-Pacific concern

“Food safety is a shared responsibility and is no longer an issue just for individual countries. Food is also a vital component of trade and a considerable contributor to APEC member economies. It is for these reasons that the APEC member economies established the Food Safety Cooperation Forum which issued the Hunter Valley Statement at its first meeting in Australia in 2007,” claimed Steve McCutcheon, Food Standards Australia New Zealand’s CEO, following the second APEC Food Safety Cooperation Forum that has just finished in Singapore.

“At the Singapore Forum, we were pleased to announce that the APEC economies have agreed to continue their efforts in strengthening food safety capacity building activities and improving food safety information sharing across the region. We also reaffirmed our commitment to working together to build robust food safety systems so as to accelerate progress towards harmonisation of food standards with international standards to improve public health and to facilitate trade.”

The forum was co-chaired by Australia (Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ)) and China (the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People’s Republic of China (AQSIQ)) and involves other APEC member economies including Canada; Chile; Chinese Taipei; Indonesia; Japan; Republic of Korea; Malaysia; Mexico; Brunei; New Zealand; Papua New Guinea; Peru; Republic of the Philippines; Singapore; Thailand; United States of America; and Vietnam.

Key international organisations with an interest in food safety also attended.

At its first meeting in the Hunter Valley in 2007, the APEC Food Safety Cooperation Forum (FSCF) agreed to work together to build robust food safety systems among APEC member economies so as to accelerate progress towards harmonisation of food standards with international standards to improve public health and facilitate trade.

The broad goals of the FSCF agreed by APEC member economies are:

• to develop transparent information-sharing and communication networks that provide accurate and timely information to consumers and producers on food safety ;
• to harmonise food safety standards, to the extent possible, with international standards and encourage food safety systems consistent with members’ rights and obligations under the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreements of the World Trade Organisation ;
• to enhance skills and human resource capacities to enable the development of national food safety regulatory systems that are harmonised with international standards.

The goal of the APEC FSCF PTIN will be to support and assist APEC Member Economies in designing, implementing, and promoting the projects and priorities consistent with the FSCF Implementation Plan 2008-2011. While the task of initiating specific projects will remain with individual APEC member economies, the APEC FSCF PTIN will serve as a common resource and a coordination point for projects and project overseers. This will be accomplished by:

• creating a network of food safety institutes and trainers in the APEC region focused on a core food safety management curricula;
• building on existing FSCF working relationships among government authorities, establishing additional relationships with academic institutions and industry to assist stakeholders such as regulators, growers, producers and manufacturers to: (i) build capacity to provide consumers with a safe supply of food and to facilitate trade in food and food products, and (ii) communicate and exchange scientific and technical information related to food safety;
• supporting the development and implementation of training sessions, seminars and workshops on food safety that support the use of international standards, such as those developed by Codex, OIE and IPPC, in a manner consistent with the obligations of the WTO SPS Agreement.

“APEC economies will focus their attention on strengthening coordination of food safety capacity building activities, utilising a broad range of government, industry and academic stakeholders through the new Partnership Training Institute Network initiative developed by the United States of America. The capacity building activities will include strengthening capacity in assessing food safety capacity building needs; food safety risk analysis; developing food laws, standards and enforcement systems; microbiological risk analysis and assessment; food safety risk communication; and chemical safety risk assessment, among others," McCutcheon noted.

“APEC economies also agreed that they will build on already established networks and processes, particularly to strengthen ability to share information in the event of food safety emergencies.”