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The NSW Food Authority is this year celebrating 20 years of keeping the state’s food safe and protecting the health and wellbeing of the people of NSW.
Since 2004, the Food Authority has worked closely with the food industry, NSW Health, local councils and the wider community to reduce foodborne illness and its impacts.
Food Authority CEO Dr Lisa Szabo said it was Australia’s first agency responsible for regulating and monitoring food safety across the ensure supply chain, from farm to fork.
"Safe food is big business in NSW. It supports more than 600,000 jobs and underpins many rural and regional communities. In fact, about 40% of the state’s food processing businesses are located in regional areas,” she said.
“The Food Authority plays a vital role, ensuring consumers can have a high level of confidence in the food they buy.”
Dr Szabo said the Food Authority had many wins in improving food safety standards and reducing foodborne illness over the past two decades.
These include NSW leading the way for improved disease surveillance through whole genome sequencing technology.
“This really was a game changer in Australia for identifying foodborne illness outbreaks – and being able to respond to them sooner,” she said.
“As we celebrate this milestone we acknowledge and thank the industry and agencies that contribute to delivering safe food for the people of this state.
“Consumers also have an important role to store and prepare food safely – they are the last link in the food safety chain.”
Fast food facts
Each year the NSW Food Authority:
- investigates around 300 foodborne illness outbreaks involving two or more people
- licenses 14,600 food facilities
- conducts around 5,000 audits on food producers and processors
- supports over 55,000 retail food businesses
- responds to over 20,000 helpline enquiries and reports from industry and consumers
- has more than 1.5 million unique visits to its website foodauthority.nsw.gov.au.