Campaign to educate children on food safety underway
The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has started an intensive food safety education programme in basic schools across the country to enable children to know how to protect their food from contamination.
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The Head of Food Safety at the FDA, Ms Lovelace-Johnson, said the programme was also aimed at creating awareness of the need to be conscious about what children eat.
“We think we have to inculcate food safety habits in the children by following the biblical principle of training the child the way he should go so that when he grows up he would not depart from it,” she added.
Ms Johnson told the Junior Graphic that the authority had realised that a lot of people did not appreciate food safety, especially with jokes like, “African germs do not kill, and the person who brought hygiene was killed by a waste management truck.”
She said there was, therefore, the need to move away from such jokes by teaching children about food safety for them to keep their food safe and healthy and be strong as they grow into adulthood.
“We go from one basic school to the other, taking time to meet and teach them about the concept of food safety.”
During the interactions with the schoolchildren, Ms Lovelace-Johnson said the children were given five key food safety tips.
She said the tips were to teach children to keep food clean, separate raw and cooked food, cook thoroughly, store food at safe temperature and use safe ingredients and water always.
Ms Lovelace-Johnson advised schoolchildren to be cautious of the food they buy in school, adding that children needed to remain healthy to be in school at all times.
The environment in which they buy their food, she said, should also be looked at to avoid eating contaminated food which could harm them.
