Food Safety

 SHISUK is actively engaged in policy advocacy, mass awareness raising, capacity building of various stakeholders in the value chain of safe and nutritious food in Bangladesh, research and development on safe and nutritious food systems and processes of the food supply chain/value chain, and strengthening collaboration among stakeholders.

To promote Food Safety Culture, SHISUK has been implementing different programs since 2014 with FAO FSP under component 3, Creating Public awareness and education on Food safety and consumers’ health,  as a member of Bangladesh Food Safety Network (BFSN).SHISUK undertook the responsibility to implement program activities in 5 districts including organizing Global Hand Wash Days event in Dhaka.

SHISUK also implemented  “Large scale training of farmers on food safety and the FAO code of practice through local farmers’ groups and associations” funded by FAO Bangladesh to build awareness of 100,000 farmers of 10 Upazila on FAO food safety code of practice through-

·       Developing Master trainers on Food safety code of practice (CoPs)

·       Capacity building of Lead farmer, A total of 414 lead farmers (337 male and 77 female) were trained in 10 upazilas in Bangladesh.

·       Training Farmers group FFS (IPM/ICM) club members for safe food production initiative (Nirapad Krishi Club)

·       Outreach and Sensitization of neighboring farmers 

The program has unlocked the potential not only to promote food safety culture but paved the path to improve the quality of the producer and products. The community of Daudkandi are famous for fish culture in floodplain since 1999. Food Safety program is a new era for SHISUK and to the Daudkandi community.

The stakeholder are motivated and supportive to the program; including the local government, local administration and civil society.  Upazila Chairman Daudkandi,  Major (Ret’d) Mohammad Ali Suman, declared to make Daudkandi a Safe Food Upazila by end of 2019 in Advocacy meeting on March 9, 2017.

The lead farmers are inspired by the training and exposure visit. Many  members took initiative already to replicate best practice model in their own area.

 “We have chosen SHISUK as our partner in this cause because of its profound success in the field of Rural Fishery Entrepreneurship development in the Flood Plain water. We are assisting ‘SHISUK’ in advocating for safe food, raising awareness among the farmers and thus to bringing up the large framing community into the change making campaign”- Dr. Sue Lautze, FAO Representative, in her chief Guest deliberation in Advocacy meeting on promoting awareness on safe food practices and culture in the locality was organized by SHISUK on March 9, 2017.

SHISUK organized several stakeholders meeting. On 22 October, 2016 in Eliotganj, Daudkandi, Mr. Mike Robson, FAOR, Bangladesh was present there as chief guest and Dr. Rokeya Khanam, National Advisor , Food safety program was also present

The UP Chairman, selected women councillor, councillor and other officers  were present at those meetings. Organized Stakeholder Meeting with UP Chairman and Member of Eliotganj North and Eliotganj South, Daudkandi organized On 4th and 18 April 2017.

SHISUK has conducted 2 ToT workshops on FAO code of practices at SHISUK training centre in Daudkandi, collaboration with FAO-FSP from May 04-06 and May 23-25, 2017. 31 participants 20 SAAO officers from DAE and 11 personnel from the partner organizations has attended in two ToT program.


The training workshop was officially opened by Md. Shah Alam, Upazila Agriculture Officer, Daudkandi. The workshop was facilitated by resource persons from FAO, DAE and SHISUK. Mohammad Rafiqul Islam, National Value Chain Specialist, FAO-FP was present as trainer and resource personnel to the program.

This three days long training program, aimed at providing introductory but practicable knowledge to the participants. It explains a) FAO code of practices to produce and consume safe food, b) Brief on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system, c) management system focused on prevention of problems in order to assure the production and culture of agricultural food products that are safe to consume.

Cultural program for promoting food safety

A cultural group is formed in Daudkandi to disseminate the message of safe food and hygiene practice through different cultural activities like song or folk drama. In the stakeholder meeting on 22nd October, 2016 this group performed a Jari song containing the message of Food safety.   The group also made a cultural performance during the present FAOR Dr. Sue’s visit to  Daudkandi on 9th March 2017


Farmers Exchange Visit to the Best practice sites

16-17 November 2016 a team of 11 farmers (leaders of community enterprises) from Eliotganj, Daudkandi and a team of 12 farmers from Natore went to Rajshahi to visit the Good Practice sites, successful fish farms of lead farmers trained by FAO.  The trained lead farmers are following FAO food safety code of practice in their respective farms.

Both team visited different farms located in Durgapur, Poba and Tanor Upazilla of Rajshahi district. Significant learning from the exposure visit are: 

1.     The farmers in the good practice site are very much careful about collecting good seeds, usually they prefer to collect the fingerlings from the Padma River.

2.     They follow two steps of culture, at first they nurse the fingerlings in nursery pond for a year to get up to 1kg weight. Then they release the 1kg size fish into another rearing pond and rear it up to 4kg-8kg weight. Thus they get premium price by marketing good size fish, also live fishes.



3.     These fish farms maintain the Food Safety code of practices of FAO.

4.     Each of the farm have toilet and washing facilities in the farm area so that the workers can go to toilet if they need during work and maintain hygiene practice.

5.     They use quality feed for fish and safe water in the pond.

The learning inspired farmers’ team to replicate this model in their own area. Many of the team members took similar initiatives already in their respective farms.

School education Campaign

A daylong orientation programs were organized for  the headmasters school teachers of participating Primary and non-formal  in Cumilla, Barisal, Natore, Shirajgonj. At the end of the orientation program the teachers made a plan how they will disseminate the hand wash and food safety messages to their children during assembly session and when they will organize a quiz competition among the students. Accordingly SHISUK’s staffs were present during the assembly session and also in the quiz competition. Among the students of 3rd grade to 5th  grade 3 winner from each classes in total 513 were awarded a hand wash dispenser while others were provided refreshment. More than 10,000 school student reached by these activities. As a follow up of the program all the participating teachers disseminated the messages during the assembly and organized hand wash demonstration.  The program was attended by  Dr. Rokeya Khanam, Advisor FAO Food Safety program and Sakiul Millat Morshed, Executive Director SHISUK.