Key players (from left) Dr Joan Neil, director of the Organization of American States; Dr Fitzroy Henry director, Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute; Audrey Morris, food safety officer at the CFNI and Dr Audia Barnett, executive director of the Scientific Research Council, hold a discussion before yesterday's launch of a three-year project "Strengthening Caribbean Food Safety", to help in the development of national food safety plans in Jamaica, Barbados, St Vincent and Belize. (Photo: Bryan Cummings)

THE Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute (CFNI) and the University of the West Indies' Department of Chemistry yesterday launched a three-year project to help Jamaica, Belize, Barbados and St Vincent develop national food safety plans in light of a general need for better food safety practices in the region.

CFNI's director, Dr Fitzroy Henry said that the US$400,000 project, which is funded by the Organization of American States (OAS), would conduct surveys in the four countries to test consumers' knowledge and awareness of food safety as well as examine public health training and education programmes.

The surveys are expected to begin next month.

Henry said that budgetary constraints prevented total regional participation but that the four countries selected for the project represented a cross-section of income levels within the Caribbean community.

"We had limited resources but we wanted a cross-section. Spanish-speaking Belize has between six and eight ethnic groups; Barbados imports more than 90 per cent of its food; Jamaica has a wide disparity in the income levels between the rich and the poor; and St Vincent represented the Eastern Caribbean which has some poverty," he explained.

During the second year of the project, a regional workshop will be held at which recommendations and findings will be presented to stakeholders in health, agriculture and education. A regional food safety campaign will also be launched then, targeting students in secondary and tertiary institutions.

While stressing the need for food safety legislation and better disease surveillance systems to check diseases such as Salmonella and Meningitis and better equipped public health inspectors, Henry praised the declining trends in infant and child mortality rates in the region.

"Active surveillance and effective disease outbreak investigations are powerful tools to detect, prevent and control new and emerging food-borne diseases, and what we have in the Caribbean is a passive surveillance system that requires much change," said Henry.

However, he said, over the last few decades Caribbean countries have experienced unprecedented declines in infant and child mortality and deaths from diarrhoeal diseases and, in particular, food-borne diseases have fallen dramatically.

"But during the last decade, we note an alarming lack of attention throughout the region to filling vacancies for public health inspectors, lack of appropriate equipment and supplies to ensure adequate community sanitation and poor funding for programmes related to public hygiene," Henry pointed out.

He also called for laboratory strengthening in the region to aid in disease control

"Quick identification can also protect countries from adverse publicity related to food-borne illnesses or other diseases that impact tourism. Accurate diagnosis will also facilitate prompt detection of new and emerging agents especially now that we are consuming increasing amounts of foods that originate from all parts of the globe," Henry said.

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