Food Bill to improve health

By Kalungi KabuyeThere is a time coming to Uganda when meat will no longer be sold in dusty, fly-ridden butcheries; when fish will not be transported on pick-ups with all the turn-boys perched on top; and when no food vendor will be allowed to do business on the side-walks, but under sanitised and supervised conditions.All this will come true when the Food Safety Bill, currently in draft form, becomes reality.Recently, a workshop was held at the Hotel Africana to iron out the final draft of the Bill. Organised by UNIDO, with help from the World Health Organisation and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the workshop drew people from a cross-section of the community with a stake in food safety.Two years in the making, the Bill is supposed to replace the 1964 Food and Drugs Act, which was seen as not taking into account issues like quality assurance, and genetically modified foods and products.“The Food Safety Bill is long overdue, and it is necessary for Government to come out with a food policy. There isn’t one at present,” Kityo-Mutebi, MP Mawokota South, and Chairman of the Agricultural Sectoral Committee, told the workshop. “There has to be a policy on food preservation and security. We must have a mechanism to prepare for a bad time.”The Minister of Sate for Health (Public Health Care) Beatrice Wabudeya, pointed out that most of the food supplied in towns passes through unhygienic transport, storage, preparation and vending stages. She noted that this causes a high prevalence of food-borne diseases.Among other things, the Bill seeks to make it an offence to sell food that is poisonous, unwholesome (contains parts that are rotten, diseased, or are foreign matter) or adulterated.It is also an offence under the Bill for anybody to prepare or sell food in places with toxic substances, in containers formerly used for dangerous substances or in places that are judged unhygienic. People who transport food in unsanitary circumstances will also be committing an offence.The Bill will also limit the importation of ‘suspect’ food into this country in a bid to protect the population from epidemics like BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy), otherwise known as mad cow disease. Under this Bill, food inspectors will have the power to impound, seize and/or destroy food found to be not conforming to safety laws.ends