Food Safety Legislation in Pakistan: Identifying Entry Points for Public Intervention
Food Safety Legislation in Pakistan: Identifying Entry Points for Public Intervention
Food safety is a concern of everyone. Given that food intake is the fundamental precondition for survival, food safety issues embrace us all the time. Food safety simply means that what we eat, chew or drink is safe for human health. In order to ensure that people get safe food, multidimensional approaches have to be taken at all levels of a food chain e.g. production, storage, supply, distribution, and consumption, etc. The government and citizens are two major stakeholders in any approach to food safety. Food producers and food industry also play very important role in ensuring food safety, but this is not discussed in this paper. The focus of this paper rests on the role of government and citizens in achieving food safety through enforcement of proper legislation.
Though implementation of legislative measures is basically the mandate of the state, citizens have also a major role to play in any legislative scheme. The state provides a legal framework that lays down certain conditions for those involved in provision of food to the people. These conditions may include prohibition of the sale of adulterated goods, compliance with prescribed technical specifications, bio-safety guidelines, etc. Most of the countries around the world have developed their own legal frameworks for ensuring food safety, notwithstanding the effectiveness of these frameworks. Pakistan does not have an integrated legal framework but has a set of laws, which deals with various aspects of food safety. These laws, despite the fact that they were enacted long time ago, have tremendous capacity to achieve at least minimum level of food safety. However, like many other laws, these laws remain very poorly enforced.
This paper argues that, notwithstanding the financial constraints involved, the major reason for poor enforcement of food safety laws is the lack of demand from citizens. It is hardly any
Food safety is a concern of everyone. Given that food intake is the fundamental precondition for survival, food safety issues embrace us all the time. Food safety simply means that what we eat, chew or drink is safe for human health. In order to ensure that people get safe food, multidimensional approaches have to be taken at all levels of a food chain e.g. production, storage, supply, distribution, and consumption, etc. The government and citizens are two major stakeholders in any approach to food safety. Food producers and food industry also play very important role in ensuring food safety, but this is not discussed in this paper. The focus of this paper rests on the role of government and citizens in achieving food safety through enforcement of proper legislation.
Though implementation of legislative measures is basically the mandate of the state, citizens have also a major role to play in any legislative scheme. The state provides a legal framework that lays down certain conditions for those involved in provision of food to the people. These conditions may include prohibition of the sale of adulterated goods, compliance with prescribed technical specifications, bio-safety guidelines, etc. Most of the countries around the world have developed their own legal frameworks for ensuring food safety, notwithstanding the effectiveness of these frameworks. Pakistan does not have an integrated legal framework but has a set of laws, which deals with various aspects of food safety. These laws, despite the fact that they were enacted long time ago, have tremendous capacity to achieve at least minimum level of food safety. However, like many other laws, these laws remain very poorly enforced.
This paper argues that, notwithstanding the financial constraints involved, the major reason for poor enforcement of food safety laws is the lack of demand from citizens. It is hardly any