Global food safety improvements supported by Waters, Mars and USAID

Waters Corporation, Mars and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have jointly pledged $1 million to create the first-ever Global Food Safety Capacity Building fund. To be managed by the World Bank, the proposed fund will support global food safety improvements through expanded understanding of food safety standards and best practices throughout the food safety system, from farm to fork.

Supported by an innovative public-private partnership, the proposed fund builds on the Memorandum of Understanding between the APEC Food Safety Cooperation forum and the World Bank. The fund will leverage APEC’s food safety training programs while using the World Bank’s global reach and contributions from governments and private industry to positively impact global public health. Overall, the goal is to raise $15-20 million over the next 10 years.

Waters’ participation in this public-private partnership complements the company’s initiative to improve the availability, quality and consistency of food safety testing capacity around the world. On 15 September 2011, Waters, along with U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the University of Maryland and their Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, opened the International Food Safety Training Laboratory (IFSTL), the first permanent food safety training lab that provides hand-on training with instruction on regulatory requirements.

“To really improve food safety and improve food supplies for everyone, we must work cooperatively on a global basis in the most efficient way possible. In order to have confidence that the food on our plate is safe to eat, we need to trust the results from food testing. Teaching the science behind food safety, teaching the best and latest methods, teaching how to read results and understand whether food meets standards, this is core to who Waters is and a key component to a comprehensive food safety program,” said Dr Rohit Khanna, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for Waters.