Increasing Food Quality and Safety is Good for Business

Quality and Safety

Of the world's three million children who die each of year of diarrhea, approximately 70 percent are made sick by contaminated food. SUSTAIN volunteers work hard to improve food safety worldwide, particularly for at-risk children and mothers. In one developing nation, a volunteer improved the health of thousands by helping to set up a pasteurization system at a leading agriculture school. Other contributions include:

• Safety workshops on plant sanitation, good manufacturing practices, and quality control in Honduras and El Salvador

• Technical assistance on food packaging methods in Uganda to retain nutrients and avoid spoilage

• Assistance on establishing a mill for high protein, low-ash bread flour in Indonesia

Good Business

Improving food technology not only improves health, but reduces poverty. When food products are safe, nutritious, well marketed, and competitively priced thanks to efficient manufacturing, they attract consumers. Rising consumer demand, in turn, expands a nation's entrepreneurial base in food products, creating jobs and raising family incomes. Larger family food budgets then contribute to a further drop in malnutrition.

Improved food-industry standards also allow developing countries to export to the growing global economy, further increasing national income. SUSTAIN volunteers, combining a shirtsleeves business sense with technical knowledge, have been instrumental in steering many overseas entrepreneurs toward global sales. Other volunteers have contributed through:

• Workshops on marketing strategies for value-added products in Zambia and Russia.

• Workshops for seafood exporters in India, Indonesia, and the Philippines on the safety and quality requirements for selling to the United States.

• Organic marketing and certification assistance to vanilla producers in Asia Pacific, leading to successful exports.