ISLAMABAD: Most countries in the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) programme, which includes Pakistan, have fractured food safety control systems that exhibit limited cooperation among the local and international agencies, and as a result, consumers are likely to face food safety risks.

A report titled Strengthening Food Safety Systems in the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation Member Countries: Current Status, Framework, and Forward Strategies pointed out that the “food safety situation in the CAREC region is made severe by the complexity of food control systems adopted by each member country. This has resulted in wide variations in the structure and design of food control systems within the region”.

CAREC is an Asian Development Bank (ADB)–supported initiative, which was created in 1997 to encourage economic cooperation among countries in the Central Asian region.

Participating countries are Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, China, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

Says Pakistan’s food safety system cumbersome due to absence of supra-ministerial advisory board

The programme’s goal is to accelerate economic growth and poverty reduction in member countries. “By capitalising on mutual strengths among member countries, CAREC envisions the region to become a centre for global trade and commerce,” according to the report.

The report emphasised that there was a need for the region to have a more systematic and effective food safety system. The economic benefits that the CAREC region could obtain from an improved food safety system were considerable, as it had the economic advantage of being at the strategic point on the Silk Road and an agro-ecosystem that permitted the production of various food products, it said.

As for Pakistan, the report noted that various foodborne diseases were quite common in the country, including different forms of hepatitis, typhoid, animal contact diseases, influenza, and aerosolised dust, along with soil contact diseases.

In 2022, the World Health Organisation reported that unsafe food results in infectious illnesses caused by bacteria, viruses, parasites, and chemical substances. Consumption of these unsafe food products has resulted in around 600 million cases of diseases and around 420,000 cases of death every year, and most of these cases of morbidity and mortality occur in developing countries.

Although there are no official estimates of the total burden of foodborne diseases in developing countries, experts are equivocal that the food safety situation in developing countries is far more severe than in developed countries because food from developing countries has high levels of hazards, around 750 million people in developing countries do not have access to clean water, and the use of human or animal waste is prevalent in agricultural production in developing countries.

The ADB has implemented a technical assistance project, ‘Strengthening International Food Safety Standards in Agricultural Value Chains’, in the CAREC member countries to develop national food safety legislation and strategies to facilitate harmonisation with international food standards, improve national laboratories, and develop national food safety networks to facilitate the adoption of international food safety standards.

The technical assistance found that state agencies in CAREC member countries typically suffer from a lack of operational funding that limits their ability to operate and implement changes in their food safety policies and regulations.

The report of the technical assistance found that local food quality systems may not be able to handle a large influx of imported goods. Similarly, higher volumes of domestic food production and a lack of post-harvest management may cause undue pressure on a country’s agricultural logistics system. It may not be able to properly handle food products during transport and storage; therefore, it may adversely affect the quality of domestically available food products.

About Pakistan, the report says while food production and processing accounted for about 14.4 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2020, maintaining the economic viability of the country’s agriculture sector remains challenging due to the lack of a coherent sanitary and phytosanitary regulatory framework and harmonised food safety laws, outdated animal and plant health laws, poor supply chain management, and a heavy focus on end-product food safety testing.

Pakistan’s food safety system lacks a supra-ministerial advisory board to coordinate activities among agencies concerned, making food safety governance cumbersome and complex, often failing to facilitate trade and protect public health. There are more than a dozen federal and provincial food laws in the country, and several do not address contemporary issues on food safety.

Despite the numerous regulations on food safety, a significant proportion of the agro-food products produced in Pakistan are not compliant with animal and plant health and food safety standards, often due to high chemical and pesticide residues, according to the report.

Pakistan has enough laboratories for food safety monitoring and regulation, some of which have modest to adequate equipment and human resources capacity. Around 200 laboratories conduct various microbiological and chemical contaminant tests of food hazards. More than 100 laboratories are accredited under the ISO-17025 system and have reference laboratory status. Laboratories in the public sector are working under respective ministries.

Pakistan’s food imports are regulated by the federal government, while provincial and municipal governments regulate food safety standards concerning the domestic trade of food products.

Published in Dawn, january 2th, 2023