Thai Food Safety Meetings

This morning I met with my Program Administrators for Thailand, Paul Wedel and Patcharee Pinitsuwan (Khun Lek) with the Kenan Institute Asia. Then I met with two government agencies this afternoon. The first one was the National Bureau of Agricultural Commodity and Food Standards (ACFS). They were established in October 2002 with the mission of protecting the benefits of trade on agricultural commodities and food products of Thailand as well as safety for consumers both in and out of Thailand. ACFS is assigned to be responsible for regulating the agricultural commodity and food standards. They seem to be making good progress for such a young agency. Many of the issues they have dealt with have to do with the seafood industry and pesticide residue issues in produce. Next I met with the Department of Agriculture Food Safety Division dealing with fresh fruits and vegetables. Their mission is very similar as they monitor food safety issues in exported products. 2004 was designated as the Year of Food Safety and they believe that there has been a lot of improvement since then. Both agencies are promoting Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and HACCP. Tomorrow I get out of the city again, which I am looking forward to since I am not a city person.