Seychelles gets technical support to strengthen its food control system   |29 November 2022

Minister Joubert addressing the gathering

Representatives from government ministries and entities involved in food control, including private enterprises involved in food businesses, are taking part in an assessment and training workshop on our country’s national food control system, in line with internationally recognised standards.

The five-day workshop funded by the European Union (EU) to foresee the implementation of a facilitated assessment of the quality of food produce  or imported in the country using the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Health Organisation (WHO) food control system assessment tool, is being held at the Nayopi Business Centre, KB Emporium, Providence. It was opened yesterday morning by the Minister for Agriculture, Climate Change and Environment, Flavien Joubert.

National food control system is the activities that are done by ministries, government entities and business enterprises to ensure that food sold to a consumer is genuine, safe and is of the expected quality so that the consumer does not fall sick after consuming.  The assessment tool has been developed in 2019 by the EU in collaboration with the United States of America (USA).     

The objective of the workshop is to provide technical support to the operationalisation of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Framework for Africa, enabling rational planning for the strengthening of national food control systems based on a rigorous evidence-based assessment of the internationally recognised good practice in the design and management of national food control systems for safe and quality foods for the consumers.

The workshop is being facilitated by a group of international delegates; Catherine Bessy, senior food safety officer (FAO), Mary-Anne Green and Richard Nyumuah-lead and assistant assessor (FAO) and FAO’s local national project consultant, Guy Morel and assistant national project consultant, Audrey Zelia. The assessment and training was a request from government given that the world’s attention is on fraudulent foods which can have negative impact on health and the economy.

In his opening remarks, Minister Joubert said that as a small island, we depend on the global food production and distribution system for a significant portion of our food basket.

He noted that 90% of our food commodities is imported including our staple, which collectively account to close to 30% of our importation bill.

“While  we remain aspirational in our intents to narrow the gap between local production capacity and importation, we are also realistic that Seychelles will continue to depend on food exporting countries to contribute towards  our food and nutrition security agenda,” Minister Joubert said.   

Minister Joubert stated that as the country focuses on the four dimensions of food and nutrition security in terms of availability, access, utilisation and stability, we have to equally invest and ensure that quality of food commodities that we produce, import, export and consume are in line with the local and international standards and the country’s health policy.

He added that the training could not have been more timely and propitious as it fits within the framework of both the agriculture sector and public health sector strategies. He noted that in the meantime, the country has invested in capacity and capacity building to improve  the ability to better manage food control regulatory.

“We have also built our capacity to certify the safety of food products destined for export markets as well as the strengthening of the regulatory framework and legal instruments to better perform the function of food control,” remarked Minister Joubert. 

After giving an introduction of the assessment and  the overall purpose and specific objectives, Ms Bessy said that food control system assessment tool being used for the assessment project here, including in seven other member countries of the African Union (AU), and more specifically of the area of Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), has been used in western countries during the pilot stages and some other countries are also choosing to use it for their trial purposes.

She stated that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Comoros were among recent countries to use the assessment system tool to assess their food control system to determine priorities for improvement.

She added that the tool has been designed to fit the needs of all nations. It is able to recognise the strength and weaknesses at whatever the maturity level of the food system.

Ms Bessy noted that since the assessment tool is fairly new and she is not authorised for the moment to comment on the progress report from the EU countries and from the USA where the system is being implemented, she is definitely sure that it is helping the competent authorities in those countries to be more efficient targeting their efforts.

She said that the results of the assessment will be confidential.

She added that through providing the food assessment tool, FAO, WHO, AU and the EU is trying to help to avoid fraudulent foods to enter countries with much weaker food controls systems.

Giving a brief overview of the country’s priorities, Mr Morel said that it is doing fine in all dimensions of macro economics in terms of economic growth (up), tourism (up), GDP (up), unemployment (down), inflation (down) but the demand for main food commodities is high.

He noted that the country’s import is at 90% compared to 10% local production. The country spends almost $4 million every day on food importation among which the assessment training will help in curbing those not fit or appropriate to the detriment of the country’s health system.

Patrick Joubert

Photos by Joena Meme