Bangladesh Food Safety Authority (BFSA), in collaboration with city corporations, has planned to establish model kitchen markets in big cities.
Through establishment such market, BFSA aims to address the challenge of food contamination.
Speaking at a conference on safe food, BFSA Chairman Mohammad Mahfuzul Hoque said, "We're engaging with the concerned city corporations to set up healthy, model markets in big cities."
However, he didn't offer any time frame for establishing these markets.
The conference was held at Krishibid Institute in Dhaka on Thursday.
BFSA chief said food contamination is posing more challenge than the adulteration of food. "What we see in our kitchen markets is live birds are culled and dipped in same water over and over again thereby, posing serious risks of contamination."
He said the Authority that the government had established in 2015 in line with the 2013 Safe Food Act "is now trying to be proactive rather than reactive." He explained the newfound philosophy that instead of trying people for marketing unsafe food, they would rather try to set rules of the game where people will follow good agricultural practices (GAP) and good marketing practices (GMP).
Bangladesh Food Safety Network (BFSN), a civil network of five non-government organisations, who champion the causes of safe food, organised the daylong safe food conference with the parliamentary standing committee chief on food ministry, Abdul Wadud Dara, attending as the chief guest.
The five organisations are: SHISHUK, UBUNIG, Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB), Bangladesh Safe Agro Food Efforts (BSAFE) and Hunger Free World.
Ex-Agriculture Secretary, Anwar Farooque, UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Senior National Advisor, Dr Shah Monir Hossain, SHISHUK Executive Director Sakiul Millat Morshed, agricultural communication activist Rezaul Karim Siddique, former IRRI Representative to Bangladesh Dr Zainal Abedin, among others, spoke at the conference.
Sakiul Millat Morshed, whose community-based floodplain fishery movement earned him national gold medal and eventually recognised as a SAARC model, sought an immediate policy intervention so that community approach of development gets a legal coverage. He cited Indian government's recent enactment of producers' company act.
Morshed gave statistics showing how people in Daudkandi's floodplain areas became successful fish producers and contributing to national agricultural GDP.
