NORTH SOUTH UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT OF BBA
ASSIGNMENT 04

SUBMITTED TO
FACULTY NAME: Dr. Nilufar Kamorez Jaha
DEPARTMENT: Public Health
SUBMITTED BY
STUDENT NAME: Md. Abdullah Al Mamun
STUDENT ID: 1631489030
COURSE NAME: PBH101
SECTION: 32

ASSIGNMENT TOPIC
Food security. How you can help in prevention of food adulteration as a public
health person.

Food Security:
Food security is a condition related to the supply of food, and individuals' access to it. Concerns
over food security have existed throughout history. There is evidence of Granary(s) being in use
over 10,000 years ago, with central authorities in civilizations including ancient China and
ancient Egypt being known to release food from storage in times of famine. At the 1974 World
Food Conference the term "food security" was defined with an emphasis on supply. Food
security, they said, is the "availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic
foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in
production and prices". Later definitions added demand and access issues to the definition. The
final report of the 1996 World Food Summit states that food security "exists when all people, at
all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their
dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life".

Household food security exists when all members, at all times, have access to enough food for an
active, healthy life. Individuals who are food secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation.
Food insecurity, on the other hand, is a situation of "limited or uncertain availability of
nutritionally adequate and safe foods or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in
socially acceptable ways", according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Food security incorporates a measure of resilience to future disruption or unavailability of
critical food supply due to various risk factors including droughts, shipping disruptions, fuel
shortages, economic instability, and wars. In the years 2011-2013, an estimated 842 million
people were suffering from chronic hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations, or FAO, identified the four pillars of food security as availability, access,
utilization, and stability. The United Nations (UN) recognized the Right to Food in the
Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and has since noted that it is vital for the enjoyment of all
other rights.

The 1996 World Summit on Food Security declared that "food should not be used as an
instrument for political and economic pressure". According to the International Centre for Trade
and Sustainable Development, failed agriculture market regulation and the lack of anti-dumping
mechanisms cause much of the world's food scarcity and malnutrition.

Food security has four interrelated elements: availability, access, utilisation and stability.

 Availability is about food supply and trade, not just quantity but also the quality and
diversity of food. Improving availability requires sustainable productive farming systems,
well managed natural resources, and policies to enhance productivity.
 Access covers economic and physical access to food. Improving access requires better
market access for smallholders allowing them to generate more income from cash crops,
livestock products and other enterprises.
 Utilisation is about how the body uses the various nutrients in food. A person’s health,
feeding practices, food preparation, diversity of their diet and intra-household distribution
of food all affect a person’s nutrition status. Improving utilisation requires improving
nutrition and food safety, increasing diversity in diets, reducing post-harvest loss and
adding value to food.
 Stability is about being food secure at all times. Food insecurity can be transitory with
short term shocks the result of a bad season, a change in employment status, conflict or a
rise in food prices. When prices rise, it is the poor who are most at risk because they
spend a much higher portion of their income on food. Poor people in Malawi spend
 nearly 78% of their income on food, while poor in the US, spend just 21% (CCAFS 2014
(link is external)). Social nets can play an important role is supporting people through
transitory food insecurity.

Risks to food security:

Population growth

Current UN projections show a continued increase in population in the near future (but a steady
decline in the population growth rate), with the global population expected to reach between 8.3
and 10.9 billion by 2050. UN Population Division estimates for the year 2150 range between 3.2
and 24.8 billion; mathematical modeling supports the lower estimate. Some analysts have
questioned the sustainability of further world population growth, highlighting the growing
pressures on the environment, global food supplies, and energy resources. Solutions for feeding
the nine billion in the future are being studied and documented.[90] One out of every seven
people on our planet go to sleep hungry. People are suffering due to overpopulation, 25,000
people die of malnutrition and hunger related diseases everyday.

Fossil fuel dependence

While agricultural output increased as a result of the Green Revolution, the energy input into the
process (that is, the energy that must be expended to produce a crop) has also increased at a
greater rate, so that the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased over time. Green
Revolution techniques also heavily rely on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some
of which must be developed from fossil fuels, making agriculture increasingly reliant on
petroleum products.

Homogeneity in the global food supply

Since 1961, human diets across the world have become more diverse in the consumption of
major commodity staple crops, with a corollary decline in consumption of local or regionally
important crops, and thus have become more homogeneous globally.[94] The differences
between the foods eaten in different countries were reduced by 68% between 1961 and 2009.
The modern "global standard"[94] diet contains an increasingly large percentage of a relatively
small number of major staple commodity crops, which have increased substantially in the share
of the total food energy (calories), protein, fat, and food weight that they provide to the world's
human population, including wheat, rice, sugar, maize, soybean (by +284%[95]), palm oil (by
+173%[95]), and sunflower (by +246%[95]). Whereas nations used to consume greater
proportions of locally or regionally important crops, wheat has become a staple in over 97% of
countries, with the other global staples showing similar dominance worldwide.

Price setting
On April 30, 2008, Thailand, one of the world's biggest rice exporters, announced the creation of
the Organisation of Rice Exporting Countries with the potential to develop into a price-fixing
cartel for rice. It is a project to organize 21 rice exporting countries to create a homonymous
organisation to control the price of rice. The group is mainly made up of Thailand, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar. The organization attempts to serve the purpose of making a
"contribution to ensuring food stability, not just in an individual country but also to address food
shortages in the region and the world". However, it is still questionable whether this organization
will serve its role as an effective rice price fixing cartel, that is similar to OPEC's mechanism for
managing petroleum. Economic analysts and traders said the proposal would go nowhere
because of the inability of governments to cooperate with each other and control farmers' output.
Moreover, countries that are involved expressed their concern, that this could only worsen the
food security.

Land use change

China needs not less than 120 million hectares of arable land for its food security. China has
recently reported a surplus of 15 million hectares. On the other side of the coin, some 4 million
hectares of conversion to urban use and 3 million hectares of contaminated land have been
reported as well. Furthermore, a survey found that 2.5% of China's arable land is too
contaminated to grow food without harm. In Europe, the conversion of agricultural soil implied a
net loss of potential. But the rapid loss in the area of arable soils appears to be economically
meaningless because EU is perceived to be dependent on internal food supply anymore. During
the period 2000-2006 the European Union lost 0.27% of its cropland and 0.26% of its crop
productive potential. The loss of agricultural land during the same time was the highest in the
Netherlands, which lost 1.57% of its crop production potential within six years. The figures are
quite alarming for Cyprus (0.84%), Ireland (0.77%) and Spain (0.49%) as well. In Italy, in the
Emilia-Romagna plain (ERP), the conversion of 15,000 ha of agricultural soil (period 2003-
2008) implied a net loss of 109,000 Mg per year of wheat, which accounts for the calories
needed by 14% of ERP population (425,000 people). Such a loss in wheat production is just
0.02% of gross domestic product (GDP) of the Emilia-Romagna region which is actually a minor
effect in financial terms. Additionally, the income from the new land use is often much higher
than the one guaranteed by agriculture, as in the case of urbanisation or extraction of raw
materials.

How can I help in prevention of food adulteration as a public health person:

Food adulteration:

Adulteration" is a legal term meaning that a food product fails to meet federal or state standards.
Adulteration is an addition of another substance to a food item in order to increase the quantity
of the food item in raw form or prepared form, which may result in the loss of actual quality of
food item. These substances may be other available food items or non-food items. Among meat
and meat products some of the items used to adulterate are water or ice, carcasses, or carcasses
of animals other than the animal meant to be consumed.

Prevention of Food Adulteration as a public health person:

 The Act aims at the abatement of adulteration in food articles of human consumption
commonly used by the people so as to enable the people to have access to wholesome and
unadulterated food.
 In the urban of the State, Municipal/Corporation Health Officers are functioning as Local
Health Authorities and where there is no Health Officer the Commissioner acts as Local
Health Authority.
 In the rural areas Medical Officers of the Primary Health Centres are functioning as Local
Health Authorities. The Food Inspectors function under the control and guidelines for the
purpose of enforcement.
 Lifting of food-samples have been fixed only for 481 local bodies including all
Corporations, Municipalities and cantonments and certain Town Panchayats and
Panchayat Unions.
 The food samples lifted under the Act are tested for adulteration in seven Food Analysis
Laboratories in the State.
 One is under the control of Chennai Corporation and the other 6 situated at Guindy,
Coimbatore, Madurai, Thanjavur, Palayamkottai & Salem are under the control of this
Department.
 The Food Inspectors as per the guidelines of Local Health Authority and Public Analysts
in the above Laboratories authorised for launching prosecution.
 In the Court of law they pursue cases with the assistance of APP & Legal Adviser at the
Directorate, in Courts, if the food sample found to be adulterated and certified by the
Govt./Public Analyst.
 The public who is in need of testing the food samples suspected to be adulterated may
contact the nearby Food Analysis Laboratory.

THE END