At Seventy-third World Health Assembly, WHO Secretariat was tasked by Member States to update the WHO Global Strategy for Food Safety to address current and emerging challenges, incorporate new technologies and include innovative approaches for strengthening food safety systems under the resolution WHA73.5.
Since the endorsement of the resolution, WHO Secretariat in collaboration with the Food Safety Regional Advisors produced the draft zero of the strategy. Subsequently, WHO established through an open call the Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on food safety: safer food for better health. In total, 24 renowned food safety experts representing WHO’s six regions were selected and appointed by the Director-General to provide technical advice on the update of the strategy. Two virtual meetings of the TAG were held on 8 to 10 February and on 19, 22, and 23 April 2021, to discuss the overall structure and content of the draft strategy and offer guidance. These two meetings informed the first draft of WHO Global Strategy for Food Safety.
From 13 May to 16 July 2021, WHO launched a public web-based consultation on the draft updated strategy to collect feedback from all stakeholders, including Member States and governmental institutions, United Nations entities and other intergovernmental organizations, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, private sector entities, and individuals working in public health and food safety. In total 99 valid responses were received. The largest proportion of participants is from government or ministries officers (25%), followed by the private sector entities (17%) and NGOs (14%) and academic institutions (14%), UN systems and other IGOs (13%), individuals (11%), unspecified (6%)
WHO secretariat summarized the key comments from the public consultation and used them to guide the revision of the draft 1 strategy and prepare a draft summary report.
The full version of revised WHO Global Strategy for Food Safety will also be available soon.