Strengthening a network of food safety regulatory personnel in CARICOM countries

The Delegation in Canada is pleased to support an initiative to strengthen a network of food safety regulatory personnel in CARICOM countries.  The Pan American Health Organization & World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) held a meeting on Nov. 27-29, 2017, in Miami Florida, with members of the International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN).  An additional meeting was organized by IICA on November 29th with funding received funding from the Government of Canada. IICA supported the participation of additional delegates from the Caribbean Region to attend both the INFOSAN meeting as well as the meeting on the 29th to support the following goals:

• To strengthen the INFOSAN network of food safety regulatory personnel in CARICOM countries and support a virtual network of Focal Points,
• To establish an ongoing mechanism to identify and report on emerging issues and mitigate risks to the global food supply.

The IICA meeting attracted over 20 participants, mostly representing the countries in the Caribbean.  Dr. Lisa Indar, Caribbean Public Health Agency, shared information with the group on the current initiatives, opportunities, and challenges related to the prevention of food borne illness within the region.  Officials from the Government of Canada, representing the three departments with responsibilities in the Canadian food safety system, provided presentations to the group in efforts to support technical capacity building in the region.

As expected, the meeting served to achieve its primary objective; increased awareness of the opportunity to enhance the functioning of a coordinated virtual network in the Caribbean so that members may successfully identify and share information on emerging food safety issues.

In order to promote sustainability of the network, network members were engaged by Dr. Martin Cloutier from the University of Quebec who initiated a participatory process called “group concept mapping”.  The process is intended to provide robust measures of consensus amongst the network members and will be used to facilitate identification of needs as well as to develop the baseline and criteria for evaluation. 

Dr. Maxine Parris-Aaron, IICA Delegation in Guyana, intends to follow up from this meeting and support on-going efforts of the network to prevent food borne illness in the Caribbean region and contribute to global food safety. 

For more information:

Trudy Werry

trudy.werry@iica.int