The 5th State Food Safety Index for the year 2022-23 was released recently by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Barring Punjab, Kerala, and Arunachal Pradesh, most states witnessed a decline in their scores, continuing the declining trend over the last few years. Food Safety is critical since access to adequate, safe, and nutritious food is key to sustaining life and promoting good health. In other words, food safety, nutrition and food security are interlinked. The United Nations first announced World Food Safety Day in 2018. Since then, globally, 07 June is celebrated as World Food Safety Day by WHO, FAO, Member States, and other organizations to spread awareness and call for action to prevent, detect, and manage risks of foodborne diseases. The aim of ‘World Food Safety Day’ is to encourage everyone, from the producer to the consumer, to adopt and expect food safety standards along the food supply chain. This is expected to reduce foodborne illness, which is almost entirely preventable. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), foodborne diseases affect 1 in 10 people worldwide each year. On average, every day, 1.6 million people fall sick due to unsafe food and 340 children under 5 years of age die due to these preventable foodborne diseases. Of the estimated 4.2 lakh people who lose their lives every year by consuming contaminated food, children under 5 years of age constitute about 40%, with 1,25,000 deaths every year. According to WHO, there are also about 200 diseases, ranging from diarrhea to cancers, that are caused by consuming unsafe food, and some of these can be fatal. Foodborne illnesses usually are infectious or toxic in nature and often not visible to the plain eye. These are caused by organisms like bacteria, viruses, or parasites or by toxic chemical substances that enter the body through food and water. ‘Food standards save lives’ was the theme for 2023 The theme for World Food Safety Day 2023 was ‘Food standards save lives’ which aimed at recognizing the importance of food standards across the world in keeping consumers safe, and in underpinning an equitable trade in food. In India, the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) lays down science-based standards for articles of food and regulates their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import to ensure the availability of safe and wholesome food for human consumption. Five types of parameters are considered for the Index The FSSAI releases the State Food Safety Index (SFSI) on World Food Safety Day every year to encourage States/UTs to improve and work towards food safety in their jurisdiction. Five significant categories of parameters are considered for calculating the Index. These are Human Resources and Institutional Data, Compliance, Food Testing – Infrastructure and Surveillance, Training & Capacity Building, and Consumer Empowerment. A detailed explainer by Factly on the different parameters considered, their weightage, and the validation of the data is available here. For better comparison, the States/UTs are classified into the following categories for the assessment: SFSI Report for 2022-23 was released recently The 5th State Food Safety Index for the year 2022-23 was released recently by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Kerala, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu are leading among large states while Goa, Manipur, and Sikkim lead among small states, and Jammu & Kashmir, Delhi, and Chandigarh are among union territories. The data for this story has been taken from Dataful. The SFSI scores have dropped for almost all the states and union territories in 2022-23 compared to the previous year. The only exemptions to this trend are Punjab, Kerala, and Arunachal Pradesh. While Punjab’s score improved by 12.5, Kerala’s score improved by 6 and became the highest scorer in 2022-23. Despite Arunachal Pradesh’s improvement in score by 4.5, the state’s score is only 25.5, half of that of the top scorer in the small states category. Bihar’s score has dropped by nearly 40 points in 5 years Among the large states, the scores have been continuously declining in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, and Chhattisgarh throughout the last five years. Bihar’s score dropped by nearly 40 points from 60 in 2018-19 to 20.5 in 2022-23 to become the worst-performing state. Andhra Pradesh’s score dropped by 33 points, Chhattisgarh by 24 points, Assam by 21 points, Haryana by 20 points, and Uttar Pradesh by 7.5 points. Meanwhile, states like Tamil Nadu and Gujarat which were consistently among the top 3 states with an average of 70 points saw a significant drop to 56.5 and 48.5 respectively in 2022-23.