Food safety plays a critical role in shaping sustainable, equitable and resilient food systems that provide access to safe and nutritious food for all. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank, we know that:

• Unsafe food supplies from bacteria, parasites, viruses or chemical substances affect 10 percent of world’s population

• Ineffective harvesting, handling, storage and transit result in the loss of 14 percent of the world’s food

• Nearly 40 percent, or roughly two-fifths, of the world’s population cannot afford a healthy diet, exacerbating hunger and malnutrition

• Foodborne illness presents significant constraints to low- and middle-income countries, costing them $110 billion in lost productivity and medical expenses each year

We come together through World Food Day on October 16 to commemorate FAO’s founding. The occasion is marked by a day of collective action with events and outreach activities throughout the world, involving governments, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations and citizens, to promote healthy and safe food for all — and to reach toward a world free of hunger and malnourishment.

The United States was a founding member of the FAO in 1945 and the Food Safety Network, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USAID and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, strongly supports the organization’s efforts to defeat hunger. The Food Safety Network promotes strengthened rules and procedures — sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) systems — around the world, which can in turn ensure that foods and beverages are safe to consume while protecting animals and plants from pests and diseases. The FAO, World Health Organization, World Trade Organization and others have been instrumental in bolstering the role of food safety within the sustainable development goals as highlighted by the first International Food Safety Conference in 2019.

Like 2020, this year’s World Food Day takes place in the midst of a continuing COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic’s effects have disrupted trade and proved detrimental to many producers and suppliers along the supply chains critical to delivering safe and affordable food to households and communities.

Within this context, this year’s World Food Day theme, “Our Actions are Our Future: Better Production, Better Nutrition, a Better Environment for a Better Life,” is apt. It’s a hopeful message that challenges us to think beyond the immediate COVID-19 crisis and look critically to how food production could be made more efficient, resilient and sustainable, how food can be made more nutritious and safe, and how all of these actions — collectively — may reduce poverty, hunger and malnutrition.

Effective and science-based SPS systems ensure food is safe for consumption, and these systems can create a pathway to improved market access and trade for producers’ products locally, regionally and internationally. This can translate into higher farm income, improved livelihoods and ultimately, increased food security.

The Food Safety Network celebrates World Food Day 2021, the work of the FAO and encourages exploration of FSN’s free, self-paced learning modules at spscourses.com. A module on food safety explores not only the history of the U.S. food safety system, but also covers the value of a modern food safety system, the core principles of a national control system and it simulates how a fictional country might journey to modernizing its food safety system.

Together, we can reduce hunger and grow food security while also making our food systems safer, more effective, resilient and sustainable for all.