World Food Safety Day 2026: ‘If it's not safe, it's not food’
Much of the food you eat has travelled hundreds, even thousands, of miles to get to you, from farms through suppliers, processors, storage facilities, and distribution networks, all the way to your plate. Keeping food safe during that long journey is the theme of World Food Safety Day 2026: "From burden to solutions — safe food everywhere". Marked on June 7 and led jointly by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the theme puts a spotlight on the necessity of raising food safety standards across the world.
The UN estimate that 600 million people fall ill from unsafe food each year, leading to 420,000 deaths. The economic cost is also significant: in low- and middle-income countries alone, around $110 billion is lost annually in productivity and medical expenses resulting from issues with unsafe food. "We can't forget about food safety", says Annelies van Oosterom, International Business Development Manager for the Food, Feed and Agriculture sector at Kiwa. "The risks are real. As a leading global certification body operating across the food supply chain with this theme at the core of our mission, our job is not done yet."
The systems behind food safety
We all know food safety is vital, yet many of us do not realize how much goes on behind the scenes to ensure it. "If you go to a shop and buy a carton of milk, you might know that milk comes from a cow, but have you ever stopped to consider the journey it has made to get to you? From the farm, down through international supply chains, through transportation and storage facilities – with a myriad of systems along the way that ensure you can drink that milk safely. A thousand and one things can go badly wrong - everything needs to be measured, carefully controlled, and checked. That's why certifications that help ensure safe processes and provide confidence in safe consumption are so crucially important."
Our work as a testing, inspection, and certification body encompasses the entire food production process. We work with food manufacturers, ingredient suppliers, packaging operations, storage and distribution centers, and primary producers. From farm to fork. The services we deliver cover everything from feed safety and pest management to organic checks and sustainability tools.
Taking safety standards from burden to solution
Food safety certification has come a long way since its foundations were laid. When WHO and FAO published the Codex Alimentarius in 1963, they established the first international food standards. But the frameworks that businesses rely on today were still decades away. In the early days, many businesses experienced food safety regulations as a nuisance imposed on them from the outside; a box to tick in order to satisfy a retailer's requirement, or meet a regulatory threshold. "When certification started, it was often seen as something to achieve simply for compliance," says Annelies. "What we now see is a shift from compliance to risk-based thinking, to continuous improvement. It means asking not just "are we compliant?" but "where could something go wrong, and what are we doing to prevent it?" That shift is not yet universal, with culture, geography, and company maturity all playing a role in how far along that journey a business is, but the direction of travel is clear.
Why are third-party certifications so important in all of this? In simple terms, Annelies explains, food certifications help across four key points:
- They allow companies to comply with both retailer and regulatory standards;
- They reduce the risks of contamination and potential costly recalls;
- They strengthen the transparency of the supply chain;
- And they gain the trust of consumers.
“But certifications and supplier audits are not just checks and stickers,” she adds. “They are the mechanisms that help transform food safety risks into controlled, evidence-based solutions across the entire supply chain. It's all about turning standards into daily practices."
An independent look at food safety
One of the most important things an independent audit can do is identify issues that may not be visible to the business itself. Take a food manufacturer with strong internal controls at its own facility that has never looked closely at the ingredient suppliers feeding into its production line. An audit that reaches upstream might find that a supplier is storing raw materials at incorrect temperatures, or that a new supplier brought in at short notice has never been properly verified. These are exactly the kinds of risks that are invisible from inside the facility, and exactly where food safety incidents can enter the chain.
"You can be blind to your own risks because you are so involved," says Annelies. "We do not develop the standards we audit against. We are independent. We look at them from an objective perspective." That independence is not just a principle: Kiwa itself is regularly audited and accredited to ensure it is performing its role correctly, for instance, by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) in the UK.
The range of what can be certified is broader than many realize. Beyond food safety, Kiwa works across feed safety, organic certification, and sustainability verification. Kiwa also provides independent pest management consultancy, including forensic pest risk assessment for agrifood sites. Pest control is often treated as a facilities issue, but in a food production environment it is a food safety issue too. For international businesses with operations across multiple countries, Kiwa's global network means that audits can be coordinated and managed through a single point of contact, across multiple standards, in one go.
Food fraud adds another layer of complexity. Mislabeling, adulteration, and substitution have always existed, but high-profile cases such as the 2013 horsemeat scandal in the European Union (EU) made clear how far fraudulent products could travel through a supply chain before being detected. Standards such as FSSC 22000 now explicitly include requirements to manage food fraud risk alongside contamination. As new threats surface, the frameworks adapt to meet them. "Based on the past, you could say that standards evolve in their development to better manage the risk of food safety," says Annelies.
If it’s not safe, it’s not food
At a recent Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) conference, Annelies heard a phrase that has stayed with her: "If it's not safe, it's not food." Simple as it sounds, it captures something important about where the industry now stands.
Standards no longer exist simply to satisfy a retailer or tick a regulatory box. At their best, they drive genuine, continuous improvement in how food is produced, handled, and distributed. And they adapt when new challenges emerge.
The pressures on global food systems are not easing. Climate events, geopolitical disruption, and shifting supply chains continue to create new vulnerabilities, and with them, new demands on the certification and verification frameworks designed to manage risk. When a war creates a scarcity of sunflower oil, or extreme weather disrupts harvests in a key growing region, businesses face pressure to move quickly and source from wherever they can. “Do we know this supplier? Do we know their risks?” asks Annelies. These are questions that go to the heart of what supply chain integrity means in practice. This is where independent verification has some of its most critical work to do, ensuring that speed does not come at the cost of safety.
"World Food Safety Day is all about creating awareness," says Annelies. "When you buy a product, what is behind it is not always visible. Do you know the supply chain and the systems behind it? Are you sure everything is being measured, carefully controlled, and checked?" For the professionals and organizations working to answer those questions with confidence, independent certification is not a burden. It is a solution to build trust, demonstrate control, and help keep food safe.
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