Food Safety Culture in Africa’s Formal & Informal Food Markets

Food safety remains a challenge for any organization involved in the food supply chain. Africans, with an estimated 137,000 deaths and over 91 million illnesses per year, bear the largest burden of foodborne diseases worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

However, while a lot of effort is put into food safety processes and procedures, many of these don’t account for a significant risk: human behavior. This is where creating a food safety culture comes in handy.

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) defines Food Safety Culture as: “shared values, beliefs, and norms that affect mindset and behavior toward food safety in, across, and throughout an organization.”

Studying foodborne incidents, it is noticed that most are caused by fiascos of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) and rarely by food safety system failures. It shows the importance of comprehending people’s behaviors and the antecedents that influence their actions and attitudes.

This has proven to be especially necessary for Africa’s informal food market which occupies a major market share of the continent’s food system yet remains largely unregulated.

In this webinar, you will learn from a number of industry experts, researchers, suppliers of technologies, and government agencies, in a number of sessions on the following key issues:

• What food safety culture is like in formal/informal food markets.
• Importance of a food safety culture.
• Building a food safety culture.
• Key things to maintaining a food safety culture.
• The role of infrastructure in maintaining a food safety culture.
• Challenges in maintaining and reinforcing a food safety culture.
• The regulatory environment and its impact on food safety culture.