Last Tuesday, in observance of World Food Safety Day, the World Health Organisation (WHO) sought to expand attention to the deleterious effects of foodborne diseases under the theme ‘Safer food, better health’. The WHO estimates that there are 31 food hazards that can cause some 32 diseases; many are invasive, debilitating and deadly, but all are preventable. Yet, every year, there are some 600 million cases of foodborne diseases and 420,000 deaths, with 30% of the latter occurring in children under five years old.
Since we all have to eat to live, it is critical that our food does not sicken or kill us. Illness occurs when food or water is contaminated by parasitic or chemical agents that wreak havoc on the human body once ingested. For the most part, it is impossible for consumers to look at food items and know that they are unsafe. Much trust is therefore invested in farmers, manufacturers and sellers, including those who vend prepared foods. Governments and health authorities have a responsibility to ensure that safe practices are employed at every stage where our food is handled. However, even in instances where this is rigidly regulated checks and balances have been known to fail.
Though foodborne diseases occur everywhere in the world, the greatest risks for contracting them are found in developing countries where poverty and hunger might trump safety and sanitary measures could be lax owing to apathy, inexperience or greed or all three. For example, given the choice between preparing and consuming questionable food items and starving, those suffering from hunger might choose the former, unwittingly ingesting pathogens. Furthermore, indifferent, naive or greedy officials might be persuaded to look the other way, allowing for unsafe food to reach the general population.
Unfortunately, ignorance surrounding the danger of consuming contaminated food also plays a huge role in its continuation. Hence the WHO is concerned with spreading the word that aside from nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, foodborne diseases can cause kidney and liver failure, brain and neural disorders, paralysis and potentially cancers; in children, they can delay physical and mental development.
If, as the saying goes, we are what we eat, then ascertaining that our food is free from parasites, microorganisms, toxins and chemicals should preoccupy us. Sadly, this is not as widely prioritised as it should be. It is still the case that often, actions employed in the name of food security fail to take account of food safety or the fact that the two are inextricably linked. Further, when it has to be weighed against financial security, food safety is more likely to suffer.
For instance, innovation with organic and biofertilisers remain in the niche phase, despite the known dangers of chemical fertilisers to the environment and to humans in the event of improper storage or abuse. The latter occurs more frequently than we know and the misuse is not always voluntary.
Chemical fertilisers and pesticides can pollute groundwater and the air as well as negatively affect soil in the long term. Apart from fertilisers, there are around 140 chemical pesticides and herbicides approved for use in Guyana by the Ministry of Agriculture’s Pesticides and Toxic Chemicals Control Board (PTCCB). These are restricted to farming, yet there are more than a few that have been consistently misemployed over the years in acts of tragedy. In farming applications, there is only that element of trust mentioned earlier that allows the consumer to rely on the assumption that chemical fertilisers, pesticides and weedicides are being correctly utilised. There is no strict monitoring of their usage.
This being the case, all signs point to the need for this country to go back to basics, but also to update and innovate to phase out these chemicals, particularly given the prices are constantly rising. Organic fertilisers work efficiently in small-scale farming, and there is no reason why our budding young agri scientists cannot devise ways to make this more widespread. In fact, why not have a competition and offer a substantial cash prize or a fully-paid scholarship to the winning innovator(s)?
Instead, in January last year, government sank $60.4 million into a new testing laboratory at the PTCCB, which is supposed to monitor the quality of fertilisers being imported. One imagines that this was the cheaper option. It was also the lazier alternative and fosters reliance on countries like Russia, China and Canada, which are among the world’s top fertiliser exporters. As long as this dependency continues, real food security will remain nothing but a pipe dream. Fertiliser producers will be the ones calling the shots while our agriculture sector ebbs and flows based on the vagaries of transportation, weather and global affairs.
