At present in Fiji the foods available is not up to standard and most part of the market is full of substandard food item.
Minister for Health Dr Neil Sharma said that as a result when people, especially children consume this substandard and unhealthy foods, they become vulnerable to Non-Communicable Diseases (NCD) like obesity and diabetes.
He said there is a need to identify the existing problems in the area of food safety, security and to compliment this need the Ministry of Health has established a food unit to actually monitor the quality of foods available in Fiji.
“What the Ministry has undertaken is we have established the food unit that actually goes out looking at the physical qualities and properties of the canned foods, frozen foods and processed foods, to ensure there is expiry dates and the percentages of the ingredients used particularly the percentages of fat, protein, oil and the rest of the items is listed for consumer preference.
Dr Sharma said having the ingredients listing would assist the consumers in ensuring that they are consuming quality food.
At the same time, he revealed that the Ministry is even looking at developing the ability to chemically analyse the food.
“Than finally we will move to the stage where we will do DNA analysis of the food to ensure food safety.
“We want to make sure that we have a healthy population and stop of children becoming obese, anaemic because children are the future of our country we need to be able to give them a good future, a healthy future and a productive life,” Dr Sharma added.
The Ministry along with its partners also spearheaded the Fiji Food Summit 2009 last month and the recommendations from the summit would be presented to the Cabinet for an action to be taken to drive Fiji towards food security and safety.