Enhancing Food Safety along the Supply Chain

GLOBALISATION of the food supply presents new and unique challenges to maintaining food safety and protecting the consumer. In a region so dependent on imports, food security is even more closely linked to food safety; the more imports, the greater the risk of food safety incidences. Identifying the safety gaps in the supply chain will help manufacturers improve their food safety and quality control through international certification, system modifications, including HACCP risk analysis, and critical capital investments.

Challenges particularly still exist in the United Arab Emirates, where from 80 to 90 per cent of the requisite food demand is met by imported products.  Increasing movement of food & beverage products and commodities across the globe, whilst offering variety and diversity of brands, also pose require more stringent quality control measures to reduce incidences of foodborne disease owing to contaminated products and of packaged goods containing banned substances.

Local authorities play a key role in the region to ensure that all safety protocols and procedures are met and no lapses occur.

Markets facing common challenges
Principal amongst the challenges local food authorities face is the lack of universal food safety and regulatory standards.

"Dubai imports food from more than 150 countries, some of them that have very high standards of food safety and some of them have standards and systems that are less developed. Coming up with a set of common policy that applies to all countries is a challenge," comments Khalid Mohammed Sharif, director of Food Control Department, Dubai Municipality.

Abu Dhabi and other emirates within the country encounter similar issues whilst dealing with food safety and other procedures. Variations in quality standard notwithstanding, food imports need to comply with certain specifications and regulations.Food safety ranks high within Abu Dhabi's development plans, and the F&B processing industry as well as the hotel & restaurant sector need to level up to international standards.  

"Our food safety regime is benchmarked against the best international practices and standards. HACCP has been in force since 2001 for manufactures and the four & five stars hotels. We launched a new two-year project in January this year to extend this to cover the catering industry. We held a consultative meeting with more than 400 stake holders from this segment to share ideas and discuss the ways and means of implementing HACCP in the catering industry," says Mohamed Jalal Al Reyaysa, director of Communication and Community Service and official spokesperson for Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority (ADFCA).

Still another hurdle for food safety authorities is the communication gap, as the labour force in the emirates is just as diverse as the variety of commodities that enter its ports every day.Mr Sharif notes that people working in Dubai's food sector come from more than 200 countries."The cultural differences and language barrier makes communication difficult not to mention the weather conditions which pose a big challenge, especially in handling chilled and frozen foods," he said.In Abu Dhabi, an ADFCA survey has found that in over 40 percent of small restaurants, there is no one who can speak Arabic or English – with the person in charge usually speaking Malayalam, Bengali, Urdu or Hindi. "We are trying to meet this challenge by a multi-pronged communication strategy, whereby we not only exhaustively use the media channels, both mass media and social media platforms in English and Arabic, but also convey our messages through vernacular media in Malayalam, Urdu and other languages," Mr Al Reyaysa states.

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