The Ministry of Health (MOH) in collaboration with relevant Ministries, Departments, Agencies and other partners have prepared this Food Safety Policy for Ghana with the ultimate aim of establishing and maintaining an integrated farm to fork food safety system that ensures consumer health and public safety.
In Ghana, there are major concerns and gaps that currently exist with regard to national food safety. There are food safety issues with regard to food production, handling, packaging, processing and transportation. There are also multiplicities of regulators within the food value chain, whose activities are largely uncoordinated.
As Ghana seeks to improve her competitiveness on the global markets, there is the need to review how agri-business is conducted especially as it relates to quality and risk analysis in the country. In this light, the scope of the national food safety policy is to build a sensitive responsive and resilient food safety system that assures the right to quality food for a healthy population in Ghana.
The Policy objectives are to strengthen food safety governance in Ghana (I); to strengthen institutional coordination and collaboration (II); to promote and ensure harmonization, synergy and enforcement of laws and regulation on food safety in Ghana (III).
The policy also recognizes the development objectives of Ghana as well as international guidelines and conventions which Ghana has ratified.
The Policy objectives would be implemented through strategic actions including establishing a standard format for licensing, promoting cooperation among stakeholders, developing social behaviour change communication, increase consumer knowledge, building partnerships and links with existing health education programmes and establishing an effective monitoring system.
The result that the Policy is looking for through the implementation of the strategic actions are the establishment of food-borne disease surveillance network and early warning systems, the institutionalization of Food Safety Management System and the Development of Social Behaviour Change Communication. The same structure on the strategic actions and key results areas are mentioned in the text for the second and third Policy objectives.
The focus areas for the Policy implementation that will direct the work of ensuring food safety are Food Safety Research, Food-Borne Disease Surveillance, Inspection and Enforcement, Food Safety Training, Food Safety Public Education, Consumer Protection, Regulatory and legislative Control of Food Safety and Regional and International Representation.
The Policy lays out institutional arrangements for its implementing and nominated roles of different Ministries in this sector including Ministry of Health, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Ministry of Food and Agriculture, Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development and Ministry of Sanitation and Water Resources.
The Policy further provides for the institutional responsibility along the value chain, resource mobilization, monitoring, evaluation and communication and Policy dissemination strategy.
The Policy consists of 7 Sections as follow: Background (1); The Policy, Legal and Institutional Context (2); Policy Framework (3); Strategies to Achieve the Key Objectives (4); Implementation Plan (5); Monitoring and Evaluation (6) and Communication Strategy for the Policy (7). The text has 3 Appendixes.
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