Every year, hundreds of thousands of people suffer and thousands die of food-borne illness across the world. This is a preventable problem, which put enormous pressure on a country’s economy and causes long-lasting suffering for the families of the victims. Timely improvements in food safety standards with effective mechanism to implement them will contribute immensely to reduce the rate of food-borne illnesses, which will in turn result in less loss of income and health care costs for the affected people and ease the burden on national health care system. It will also increase productivity of a country and boost consumer confidence in its food supply leading to economic safety in the food sector.
Recently, the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) issued guidelines for the food service establishment titled Code of Practices for Food Services, which explains in detail the mandatory standards and safety requirements needed for commercial handling of food in the country.
The Code of Practice, prepared by the Food Safety and Environmental Health Department (FSEH) at MoPH, explains how to meet the mandatory legislative requirements and elaborates on the food safety hygiene measure based on a HACCP approach, which will be inspected and assessed by the inspectors of FSEH.
The document covers every aspect, whether it is infrastructure facilities or handlers connected to food and handling and processing such as prerequisites on building, equipment, pest control, personnel, cleaning, disinfection, the requirements for operation control from preparation to display, packaging, labelling and sampling of ready-to-eat food meant for direct consumption. It also deals with traceability, recall, non-conformity and complaint handling.
The guide is an important step to update and document the stages of the food chain in Qatar, from source to table, in accordance with the latest safe and recognised international standards aimed at providing highest level of safety of food traded in Qatar ensuring safety of customers.
Safety and well-being of citizens and residents have always been most important priority of Qatar and the country is keen on amending requirements and standards of procedures and activities in sectors which directly affect the daily life of people, especially food and health.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which spared no country in the world, reminds the importance of nutritious and clean food in maintaining a healthy body as good immunity is the only way to beat the coronavirus. The issuance of the code of practice for food establishments will further boost the confidence of the general people in what they eat whether it is from restaurants or prepared at home.