How to participate

National governments are critical in ensuring safe and nutritious food for all. Policymakers and agencies can use the World Food Safety Day to create awareness in the public and foster collaboration among the public health, animal health, and agriculture sectors, including engaging businesses and civil society. Actions that can be taken include:

• Organize a public event or activities aimed at the general public – concerts, festivals or fairs, food tastings or cooking demonstrations with a #foodsafety message. 
To make it virtual: Public gatherings are not going to be easy for authorities working under COVID-19 restrictions but a great deal of creativity has been demonstrated in adapting events to the online world. Music concerts and demonstrations with virtual audiences are now a ‘new normal’.

  
  
• Host a panel or roundtable that brings together key players in the food system to talk about everyone’s role in food safety, including, for example, political leaders, educators, scientists, farmers and consumer group representatives. Follow the discussion with a question-and-answer session to encourage involvement. 

  
  
• Focus on creating policy to strengthen the national food safety system. Present a draft food safety policy on World Food Safety Day or hold a townhall-style meeting to discuss.

  
  
• Engage on social media in creative ways and encourage high-level policymakers with a large social media reach to spread the word about food safety or even record a video address. Search the #WorldFoodSafetyDay hashtag for inspiration.

  
  
• Launch a food safety awareness campaign in the week leading up to 7 June. There are many ways to share the message that food safety is everyone’s business: host a series of webinars or online lectures, prepare educational videos, produce posters, flyers or booklets, and don’t forget to use this year’s promotional material for World Food Safety Day. 

  
  
• Educate consumers about safe and healthy food and encourage them to know what’s safe through TV and radio advertising or Facebook, Instagram and Twitter posts. Here is a tool which will be helpful as you plan: Five Keys to Safer Food.

  
  
• Focus on international food standards and make sure your government has everything in place for farmers and producers to make safe food and expand their market access. Prepare a roadmap of the steps to take and announce your commitment on World Food Safety Day. Celebrate achievements by zeroing in on how standards have made a difference.

  
  
• Collaborate with the food industry and help those who grow, produce, process or transport food to make it safe. Put together a food safety training or workshop for the staff and invite companies and their employees to take part.

World Food Safety Day provides a vehicle for a wide variety of private sector stakeholders in the food system to work together and ‘team up for food safety’.

• Organize a World Food Safety Day event – Engage with the public, your customers and organizations from across your sector by organizing food safety workshops, demonstrations and public lectures or conferences with partners and clients.
  
  
• Reveal ‘behind-the-scenes’ – Record the food safety practices your business uses and explain what you do at each step to keep the food safe. Produce a video and share it widely with your customers, colleagues and suppliers.

  
  
• Engage employees – Implement a food safety education campaign for staff. Use pep talks and posters to increase employees’ knowledge and improve food safety practices. Organize visual displays, taste tests and handouts. Feature food safety literature, recipes and education materials in a newsletter.
  
  
• Educate consumers – Hold consumer education events on World Food Safety Day and use your corporate communications tools to spread the message about safe food to the broader public. Use the World Food Safety Day social media materials to reinforce messaging.

  
  
• Publicize World Food Safety Day – Spread the word through your communications channels to your network: on the website, through social media, on the company’s information board. Use these ready-to-use communication materials in six languages. Print out the World Food Safety Day poster and display it in high-visibility places.

College campuses play an important role in building momentum toward a better and safer food system. World Food Safety Day provides new opportunities for student learning and leadership, and community engagement. Involve student leaders, campus administrators, faculty, student groups, and other campus organizations to join you in World Food Safety Day planning. Everyone has a role to play!

• Organize a World Food Safety week of events including discussions with food and agriculture professionals and activists, webinars, food safety demonstrations, film screenings, surveys and an information fair. 

  
  
• Rally your community around a common goal and work with your campus administration and food service professionals to take a leadership stance when it comes to food safety; develop a comprehensive set of food safety provisions to enact at your campus.

  
  
• Invite guests for a panel discussion. Consider people responsible for food safety from farm to fork - those who grow, process, sell, prepare and serve food. Ask a high-profile public official or a celebrity chef to give a keynote address. 
  
  
• Hold a safe cooking competition, led by the university cafeteria, where students can learn and share safe cooking practices in the kitchen. 

  
  
• Create a quiz to test people’s knowledge on food safety issues and share it with a wider audience to help spread the news about World Food Safety Day and raise public awareness of food safety.
  
  
• Petition your college administration to proclaim World Food Safety Day on campus and sign a pledge to support food safety education and awareness throughout the year.

Schools and educators can celebrate the World Food Safety Day with events in the cafeteria, in the classroom, in the school garden or with a field trip. They can take place at schools, youth centres and camps, or be organized by parents and children at home together. Activities can be held any time, not necessarily on 7 June. Follow this sampling of activities and adapt them to any age level.

• Hold a school-wide assembly and invite people who grow, process and cook food to talk about food safety and do demonstrations. 

  
  
• Host a food tasting or a cooking demonstration involving local chefs and students, introducing children to healthy food options and highlighting the #foodsafety message.

  
  
• Invite a health or food safety expert to share their scientific knowledge with the classroom or school. They can also talk about their own educational path to get to where they are.

  
  
• Organize a school-wide poster competition on food safety and choose a winner. Use the winning poster to promote food safety awareness at school throughout the year. Get inspired by the World Food Safety Day poster available here.

  
  
• Organize a video screening and show the Five Keys to Safer Food video to your students and have a discussion afterwards. Note that the video is available in numerous languages. 

  
  
• Create a photo montage to visually document good food safety practices and make a collage or produce an exhibition that shows food safety in action. Consider holding a competition between the classes for the best display.