Safer Street Food in Bangladesh
Krishibid
Md. Zahirul Haque
Street food is ready-to-eat food or drink sold by
a hawker,
or vendor, in a street or other public place, such as at a market or fair. It
is often sold from a portable food booth,food cart,
or food truck and
meant for immediate consumption. Some street foods are regional, but many have
spread beyond their region of origin. Most street foods are classed as
both finger food and fast food,
and are cheaper on average than restaurant meals. Today, people may purchase
street food for a number of reasons, such as convenience, to get flavourful
food for a reasonable price in a sociable setting, to try ethnic cuisines,
or for nostalgia.
A
large part of the urban population, particularly from the lower income groups
meet s a substantial part of its dietary and nutritional needs through meal and
beverages offered by outdoor vendors. Such "street food" is often
highly contaminated with grerms and other bacteria, making them dangerous for
the health of consumers. Regulating the street food sector and training vendors
on how to hygienically prepare and store food can significantly improve food
safety.
The
urban population in Bangladesh is increasing rapidly. The number of people
living in the country’s capital Dhaka is about 20 million. This development has
led to an increase in the demand for relatively inexpensive and ready to eat foods as many urban
residents spend most of the day outside of the house and have little time and
money to spend on food. Rapid urbanization also turned street food vending into
an important business; in Dhaka alone, over 2 lac people earn their living by
selling street foods.
In
Bangladesh, street food include chola boot (chickpeas), bhelpuri (puffed rice
with potatoes0 and samucha (deep-fried dough stuffed with vegetables and/or
meat) as well as drink like sugar cane juice and lassi (yoghurt and
water). Other popular snacks are ghugni
(boiled and mashed white peas with spices), singara (flour wraps stuffed with vegetables,
spices and occasionally liver) and different types of cakes.
Recent
evidence suggests that street food foods in Bangladesh are highly contaminated
with germs that can cause diseases and illness such as typhoid fever hepatitis,
gastroenteritis, dysentery, and related infections. An analysis of street foods
sold in Dhaka, for example, showed high levels of coliform bacteria, which may be
an indication of fecal contamination (Figure-1). Contamination is the result of
combination of factor, including the unhygeinic environment in which foods are
prepared and stored and of malpractices during food handling. Vendors generally
prepare the food with their bare hands, passing on germs and bacteria to what
they have on offer.
The
water used to prepare foods and to clean cooking and eating utensils-and
sometimes even the swab cloths used for drying are another source of
contamination. Finally, since foods are often stored and sold on open trays,
germs from waste collected on the streets are easily transmitted.
Several
measures could address the food safety concerns of the street food sector in
Bangladesh. The Government should formulate realistic laws, rules and regulations
on street food vending, establish adequate infrastructure facilities and
develop plans of action for implementing of street food vending. Currently,
food laws and regulations do not provide any specific standards with which
vendors need to comply to carry out their activity.
But
rules and regulations alone are not enough. Food and quality control measures
need to be strengthened, for example through regular inspections. There is also
a need to train street food vendors on proper food handling and preparation,
protective display and safe storage. Personal hygiene and health of the vendors
is one of the keys to safe street food vending. Results of a study by the
Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) on the "Institutionalization of
Street Food Vending" pointed to the potential benefits of such a strategy.
Foods
prepared by trained vendors contained fewer germs which were within acceptable
standards of microbiological criteria for foods and food ingredients set by the
World Health Organization. Enhancing public awareness and media advocacy on the
safety and nutritional aspects of street foods would be an important complement
to such measures.
Improvements
are possible through the right policy mix. Experience from Malaysia, Singapore
and Thailand highlight the necessary components
of improvements of street food
regulation, the choice of adequate enforcement mechanisms, and the development
of necessary infrastructure such as street food vending equipment, training
tools and clean water facilities. Bangladesh should use these lessons from
neighboring countries to reform the street food sector effectively. Besides
this, authority can be formed who will monitor street food sector, arrange
training on safer street food to the sellers. Authority can mark street food
shop trough grading (i.e. A+, A…etc) and can distribute Safe Street Food Shop
Certificate which will be mandatory shown on the street food shop where people
will see this certificate and will be ensured their product status. Frequent
mobile court should be managed for ensuring quality of safe food. If any
unhealthy foods are to get in a shop, the certificate of that shop will be
cancelled and their certificate grading level will be diminishing score.
As
street food plays an important role for the food provision of the urban
consumers. While most do not substitute good home-made rice meals with, for
instance, lunch on the street, street food are important supplements to the
daily diet of Dhaka’s labour force, in particular of the working poor. But food
safety has been a weak point of street food. In general, the environment in
which these street foods are prepared, handled, catered, preserved and disposed
is unsatisfactory and often even highly unhygienic. The drinking and washing
water served to the customers is often not stored and handled properly. One
reason for these practices is the fact that these vendors are illiterate and
have little knowledge about nutrition and food hygiene. Even in their own daily
life at home, seldom they themselves might follow hygienic food handling
practices. Improving their own awareness and providing appropriate training to
them, as it has been started by the Consumers Association of Bangladesh (Haque
et al., 2010), will help to solve this problem. Another aspect, however, has to
do with the vendors’ insecure situation. During eviction drives the police
often deliberately destroy water canisters and buckets that the vendors use to
wash their utensils and hands; the evictions are, thus, not only random and
inefficient as such, but also further jeopardize food safety. The vendors,
thus, need easier access to clean and safe water and public toilets, instead of
being criminalized.
Policy
Guidelines on Healthy Street Food Vending in Bangladesh Having to deal with
similar challenges, India has developed a National Policy on Urban Street
Vendors in 2004 (Government of India, 2004), which is currently being
implemented all over the nation.6 Based on this example from India, the
Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB) has developed some policy guidelines
for street food vending in Bangladesh in order to assure the safety and quality
of street vended foods for the sake of the consumers, and support, empower and
legally protect the street food vendors. Among CAB’srecommendations are the
following policy guidelines. Selected Policy Guidelines on Healthy Street Food
Vending in Bangladesh-
Street
food vendors should be registered with the local government authorities with a
provision for renewal of this registration every three years. No eviction of
licensed vendors from the identified vending zone would be legal unless it is
proved to be in the public interest.
Vending
committees should be formed at ward level in the cities with legal authority to
allocate space for vending. Representatives of the police, the public works
departments, the city corporations or municipality authorities, local
(micro-credit) banks and of the vendors themselves should be members of these
committees – among them at least one third women.
The
local government authorities should delineate vending zones, in conformity with
urban development policies and the existing formal laws, and allow genuine
street food vendors to sell within these zones for a specific licensing fee.
Priority should be given to vendors, who were already in business at these
sites.
Laws
should be formulated within the period of this parliament to provide legal,
financial and socio-economic support to the vendors as well ensure safety and
nutrition of the public consumers.
A
close coordination has to be established between the relevant actors, e.g. the
local government authority, police, health department and the vendors or their
associations to implement the new laws and the new vending-zones through the
vending committees.
The newly installed local vending committees
will charge fees for allocation vending spots and issuing the licenses. They
will keep record of the number of registered vendors, map and record the
vending zones and individual plots allocated to the vendors with the agreed
day(s) and time(s) of vending, record the collected fees, promote activities
undertaken by the vendors to improve the hygienic conditions of food vending,
as well as register complaints by concerned consumers.
Public awareness should be raised on the food
safety of street food. The public
analysts of food inspection, National Food Safety Advisory Council members, law
enforcers, school authorities and vendors should be informed and trained on the
Pure Food Ordinance, the City Corporation and Municipality Ordinances and this
guideline on street vending.
Sources:
Dhaka
City Corporation: www.dhakacity.org
CAB(2010),
Institutionalization of Healthy Street Food System in Bangladesh: A Pilot Study
with Three Wards of Dhaka City
Corporation as a Model: Available on
www.nfpcsp.org
FAO (2007), Promises and challenges
of the informal food sector in
developing countries
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