World Food Safety Day 2021: Overview of festivity and creativity

With a theme of ‘Safe food now for a heathy tomorrow’, World Food Safety Day (7 June 2021) focused on the immediate and long-term benefits of producing and consuming safe food. It was a day to remember that food safety is part of food security and good health. It was a time to recognize the intrinsic connections between the health of people, plants, animals, the environment and economy. And it was a moment for heightened creativity.

International organizations, governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations, academics and individuals from 90 different countries convened to showcase their achievements, discuss their priorities and plan how to overcome challenges in the food safety realm. The pandemic meant, for a second time, that many initiatives were held virtually, which inspired organizers to make imaginative use of social media, online events and more in reaching audiences.

In this summary, we take a glimpse at the webinars, videos, press conferences, media coverage, contests, social media posts and campaigns that involved millions of people across the world in May and June 2021. Find out more about food safety on the FAO, WHO, Codex Alimentarius and INFOSAN websites.

The campaign this year was launched on 18 February with a live broadcast on YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn, featuring inspirational stories from around the world and revealing the year’s theme: “Safe food now for a healthy tomorrow”. A guide to World Food Safety Day was published a month later in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

International organizations, governments, businesses, non-governmental organizations, academics and individuals from 90 countries organized about 300 different events, according to our calculations. And thousands broadcast #WorldFoodSafetyDay messages across an array of platforms. The slogan, “Food safety is everyone’s business”, was shared in webinars and videos, posters, banners and artwork, and taken to heart in the multitude of multi-sectoral, multi-disciplinary webinars and conferences.

The theme allowed for wide-ranging discussions. Experts, students, professionals, consumers and farmers addressed questions with a generally upbeat tone. What lessons about food safety can be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic in our globalized and mutually reliant world? What innovations and technology can help improve future food trading? And how can we teach our youth to pursue a tomorrow free of foodborne illness? The ‘One Health’ approach to food safety was considered by many, with the recognition that a “healthy tomorrow” is only possible if we protect human health as well as that of animals, plants, the environment and economies.

The global community came together to “draw attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect and manage foodborne risks.” We cannot include everything in this report, but we hope it gives a flavour of how World Food Safety Day unfolded in 2021.