Surveillance programme launched to control pathogens and contaminants during food production

The Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), in collaboration with the Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME), announced the launch of the monitoring and surveillance program to control food pollutants and pathogens during the initial stages of production and processing and throughout the food chain, as part of the multisectoral one health approach.

The program aims to monitor pathogens to prevent their transmission to humans through the intake of contaminated foods. Wassan Abdulla Al-Baker, Director of Food Safety and Environmental Health, MoPH, said that the program has been developed to better understand human-to-animal diseases and identify any gaps to prevent the contamination of food products along the food chain, noting that its framework contributes to involving local farms and state abattoirs in the development of specific strategies to address and control biological and chemical hazards and the identification of indicators to measure those risk levels in accordance with international best practices. 

The Ministry of Public Health is working in collaboration with the relevant government partners to ensure that food products access markets in a manner that ensures their health and sustainability by building the capacity of local farms to manage health risks, as well as improving the investment environment to keep the local product competitive in the market.

Source: Peninsula Qatar