Abstract
Foodborne diseases continue to be a global public health problem with an estimated 600 million people falling ill annually. In return, international standards are becoming stricter which poses challenges to food trade. In light of the increasing burden of foodborne diseases, many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have upgraded their food laws and undertaken changes to the organizational structure of their regulatory institutions to maintain or expand international export activities, tighten control on local and imported products, and protect consumers’ health. However, until this date, the published information on the regional health burdens of foodborne diseases is very limited and it is not clear whether the recent changes will serve towards science-based and effective preventive functions and the adoption of the risk management approach. In this review, we summarize the recent food safety issues and the national food control systems of selected countries in the region although we were challenged with the scarcity of information. To this end, we examined the national food safety systems in the context of the five essential elements of the FAO/WHO Guidelines for Strengthening National Food Control Systems. These five elements—food law and regulations; food control management; inspection services; laboratory services; food monitoring; and epidemiological data, information, education, communication, and training—constitute the building blocks of a national food control system, but could also serve as tools to assess the effectiveness of the systems.
Highlights
Foodborne diseases (FBD) are a global public health issue that has major impacts on human health, livelihoods, and health care systems, and affecting international trade through national control strategies by the implementation of food laws and regulations
We summarize the recent data on FBD in the region, trends and developments in national prevention and control systems while discussing the compliance of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) states with the five elements of the National Food Control System (NFCS) based on the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)/World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines [17]
Several countries in the MENA region have made substantial improvements in developing entirely new systems for the regulation and oversight of food safety, and much of these developments have been seen in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries
Summary
Foodborne diseases (FBD) are a global public health issue that has major impacts on human health, livelihoods, and health care systems, and affecting international trade through national control strategies by the implementation of food laws and regulations. A disproportionately large share of available freshwater is used in irrigated agriculture, but it is accompanied by intensive use of fertilizers the excess of which contributes to water quality degradation through pollution and salinization through the invasion of aquifers by seawater [10] In this sense, given the climate change effect on weather and precipitation patterns, the MENA region is projected to see more frequent and severe droughts [11], in addition to rising challenges in food safety due to increasing temperatures and unregulated use of wastewater for agriculture and food production [12]. The growing population, weak agricultural production and severe constraints on arable land and water scarcity make the GCC largely dependent on food imports This together with the rising number of FBD forced these countries to strengthen their food control management systems and to undertake considerable reform to their existing systems (this is discussed ), while others (low- and middle-income countries) lag behind due to war crisis, political upheavals, and rampant corruption (e.g., Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon). There is limited information on the food safety aspects of food imports that occur in tandem with the influx of immigrants
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