Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA) has started issuing ‘health certificates’ to make it easy for exporters to ship food products and increase foreign currency earnings.
The initiative was launched on Sunday through the issuance of the certificates for two companies- ESL Bangladesh Limited and Trust and Trade- at an event organised by the Ministry of Food at the BFSA’s office in Dhaka.
Food Minister Sadhan Chandra Majumder as the chief guest said now Bangladesh would provide the certificate based on international standards, enabling the world to know about the availability of safe food in the country and helping to further increase exports.
Ismail Hossain, secretary to the ministry, stressed on building trust to issue health certificates recognisable universally and hoped that the BFSA would carry out their responsibilities properly.
According to the BFSA, a decision was taken a few months ago by all the ministries that the Export Promotion Bureau would issue this health certificate as the bureau was temporarily carrying out the task. Later, at an inter-ministerial meeting on September 6 it was decided that only the BFSA would issue this certificate.
One in 10 people in the world suffer from food-related illnesses every year and 420,000 people die. Moreover, one out of three children die of food-related illnesses. In Southeast Asia, 150 million people are falling ill due to this and 175,000 die, of which 50,000 are children.
