Jakarta (Greeners) – Indonesia’s Food and Drugs Agency (BPOM), Roy Sparringa, said that ASEAN Economics Community (AEC) gave opportunities for the country to take up active role and face challenges on trade, especially food, service and human resources, related to food security in the region.
Based on Global Food Security Index 2015 published by The Economist Intelligence Unit, Indonesia’s food quality and security ranked 74 out of 109 countries or 6th of 8 ASEAN nations.
Sparringa said that high quality food production can increase economic value and reduce poverty. Furthermore, he said that high quality food was essential to human health.
World Health Organization (WHO) predicted more than 200 diseases caused by unhealthy food consumption.
“One of the diseases related to food is diabetes, an inability of the body to process sugar resulted to high glucose level in the blood,” he said during opening ceremony of 2016 National Food Security Month, in Jakarta, on Monday (09/05).
Celebrating World Health Day 2016 on April 17, BPOM held National Food Security Month with the theme “Food Security For Future Investment”, starting on April to May.
The event is aiming to increase food security and ensure high quality food consume by people.
One of the agenda is establishing Food Security Policy Research Center, a joint center between BPOM and Bogor Agricultural Institute that aims to increase public health and Indonesia’s food product competitiveness.
“Today marked the peak of Food Security Month. I want to promote food security network, which involving members of integrated food security network, to serve as communication, information and education center for people working in food industry. In addition, to increase public knowledge on food security. Hence, good food security practices can be consistently applied from individual to industry and ensure for high quality food product availability in Indonesia,” said Sparringa.
Reports by Danny Kosasih
21 Apr 2024 
