On October 18 Dr. Haley Oliver, Director, feed the future innovation lab for food safety (FSIL) made a visit at SAHAVAGI central office. FSIL has been escalating International food safety research, education and outreach to increase food safety awareness, impact in formulating safer food policies and bridging implementing gaps. Dr Oliver will stay in Nepal till October 22 where she will meet several stakeholders including federal and provincial governments, USAID Nepal Mission and Nepal partners.
In meeting with SAHAVAGI board of directors, staffs, project lead PI Prof. Dr Aditya Raj Khanal, Tennessee State University and in-country leads: Ramhari Timilsina from AFU and Saroj Raj Poudel from SAHAVAGI, Dr. Oliver emphasized the role of; Feed the Future, US Government’s global hunger and food security initiative; several innovation labs in the United States and Food Safety Innovation Lab. Mr. Poudel presented the organizations vision, mission and objective and debriefed accomplished consumer household and WTP elicitation survey activity of the project before the panel.
“SAHAVAGI has been in the mission to achieve self-reliant, discrimination, hunger free society with equal education and opportunity for all. It has been 25 years in this journey where we have prioritized food security but now food safety is the emerging concept and we are proud to contribute in eradicating food borne illness from Nepal” says Shaligram Sharma, Chairperson SAHAVAGI.
USAID/FSIL-Nepal Project has been implementing in Nepal since March 2022 by SAHAVAGI in collaboration with Agriculture and Forestry University, Nepal, Tennessee State University; Arizona State University, USA. Project is targeting two borad spectrum of fresh produce value chain: production and consumption to assess bacterial contamination, diet diversity, safety awareness among growers and consumer households and estimate incentives for safer food production and consumption by adopting safer practices. Moreover, Project will provide training and outreach activities focusing on youth and female farmers to adopt food safety practices and food safety augmented agri-businesses. Several scientific publications will be contributed through this project.