Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), April 4 2018

A workshop on food risk analysis applied to food regulatory decisions is being organized in the Ivory Coast capital Abidjan, on 4-5 April 2018. The workshop gathers food regulators from Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal and is implemented by the Food Risk Analysis and Regulatory Excellence Platform (FRAREP) of Université Laval, Quebec, QC, Canada, supported by the Foreign Agricultural Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA/FAS) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The workshop is part of a program of targeted interventions supported by both US agencies and aimed at strengthening capacity in food regulatory policy development in West Africa, in accordance with best practices advocated by the Codex Alimentarius Commission and its parent organizations the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

This initiative is carried out at a time when Cote d’Ivoire and Senegal and the West African region as a whole are witnessing significant investments to enhance food safety regulatory oversight, resulting in reviewing and updating the structure, mandates, operations and capacity of food safety competent authorities. As a result, FRAREP is partnering with the Inter-Professional Fund for Research and Agricultural Counsel (FIRCA), which is leading efforts to renew the national food safety control system (FADCI-SSA) in Cote d’Ivoire.

This workshop will be an opportunity to review, discuss and exchange experiences in the way food regulatory decisions are made and structured thanks to the reliance on risk analysis, as a basis for sanitary measures, taken by food competent authorities with the aim to protect consumers’ health and ensure fair practices in the food trade.

An innovative approach will be applied, combining both lectures and group work during a 1.5-day meeting, as well as online interactions and access to key information before and after the meeting itself, thanks to the Distance Learning Platform of Université Laval. “Sustaining the benefits of investments in capacity development and triggering what may lead to lasting impacts in enabling robust food safety regulatory measures in the region is the aim pursued by our Platform in contributing to the implementation of the capacity development Program supported by the USDA/FAS and USAID in West Africa ” declared Prof. Samuel Godefroy, Professor of Risk Analysis and Regulatory Policies at Université Laval, formerly a senior Canadian food regulator and serving as one of the key instructors of the workshop.

Further interventions are being considered in the region in the near future, with the aim to propagate best practices in food regulatory decisions and in line with international guidelines.