Recognizing World Food Safety Day (WFSD) 2026 and the new estimates on the global burden of foodborne disease, WHO’s Elaine Borghi, Ph.D. discusses the development of the estimates and how they can be used to drive effective interventions that meaningfully improve food safety and public health.
In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we speak to WHO’s Dr. Elaine Borghi about the new global foodborne disease burden estimates, updates to the methodology, key insights from the data, and the importance of using data to target food safety interventions, aligning with the WFSD theme “From Burden to Solutions—Safe Food Everywhere.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released its anticipated updated global burden of foodborne disease estimates, which suggest that 42 microbiological and chemical hazards caused approximately 866 million illnesses and 1.52 million deaths in 2021.
The study was conducted to support the development of new global burden of foodborne disease estimates, which are going to be released on June 4, ahead of World Food Safety Day.
Organized by UNIDO, the Asia Food Safety Forum will take place June 11–12, 2026 in Bangkok, Thailand, fostering dialogue, promoting innovation, and strengthening regional cooperation to support safer, more sustainable, and more competitive food systems across the region.
Ahead of World Food Safety Day, FAO and WHO have introduced a Food Safety Roadmap Development Tool and an online learning course on Codex-aligned risk assessments, supporting competent authorities and other stakeholders seeking to utilize science and data to improve national food safety systems.
FAO, WHO, and the Codex Coordinating Committees for Africa and the Near East led a training with more than 350 participants from the Africa, Near East, and Eastern Mediterranean regions, focused on participation in Codex standard-setting work.
During the 49th Meeting of the Codex Committee on Food Labeling (CCFL49), guidelines on risk-based precautionary allergen labeling, labeling for multipack foods, and emergency flexible labeling were recommended for adoption. CCFL also declined a proposal to initiate work related to ultra-processed foods.
Strengthening food system resilience requires not only technological innovation, but also an improved societal understanding of food system dynamics and risks.
Improvements in national food safety infrastructure by the 17 countries included in the analysis would cost an estimated $492 million USD over ten years, but would avert 19 million cases of foodborne illness and 13,000 associated deaths, generating a value of $23 billion.
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