Expert: World Food Safety Day | June 7
World Food Safety Day (WFSD) celebrated on 7 June 2021 aims to draw attention and inspire action to help prevent, detect and manage foodborne risks, contributing to food security, human health, economic prosperity, agriculture, market access, tourism and sustainable development. This year鈥檚 theme, 鈥楽afe food today for a healthy tomorrow鈥�, stresses that production and consumption of safe food has immediate and long-term benefits for people, the planet and the economy. ()
Here is an expert from McGill University that can provide comment on this issue:
St茅phane Bayen, Associate Professor, Department of Food Science and Agricultural Chemistry
Professor Stephane Bayen has been working for 5 years to develop techniques to identify adulterated food products - particularly in honey.
"Some of the fraudulent products that go into foods such as honey and spices have the potential to cause adverse health consequences for consumers. Substitution, adulteration or mislabeling create a breach in our food safety system. Illegal dyes or industrial chemicals have been shown to enter our food supply chain as adulterants. Consumers may thus be exposed to doses of toxic chemicals (pesticides, metals) or allergens through fraudulent products."
St茅phane Bayen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Food Science and Agricultural Chemistry. His research interests include (i) analytical chemistry applied to the detection of trace contaminants and their metabolites in food and the environment, (ii) the fate of contaminants (contaminant chemistry; bioaccumulation mechanisms involved in the contamination of foodstuff; behavior of contaminants during food storage, processing and cooking) and (iii) ecological & human health risk assessments.
stephane.bayen [at] mcgill.ca (English, French)
