The Mayor of Windhoek has urged food establishments to uphold hygiene standards and has encouraged residents to engage in safe food-handling practices.
Sakarias Uunona said the municipality conducted 140 random food, water and milk sampling exercises across formal and informal businesses and agricultural facilities.
Speaking during the city's celebration of World Food Safety Day, Uunona said most of the samples complied with food safety standards, but products found to be unsafe were confiscated and destroyed to prevent them from reaching consumers.
About 580,000 kilograms of assorted food declared unfit for human consumption were also destroyed, and a court order was recently secured to close a food business that failed to comply with food safety regulations, demonstrating that food safety standards are mandatory and not merely recommendations.
He said unsafe food remains a global public health challenge, citing World Health Organisation estimates that 600 million people fall ill annually after consuming contaminated food, while about 420,000 people die from foodborne diseases each year.
The mayor urged businesses, food handlers and consumers to play their part in ensuring food safety through proper hygiene, safe food handling and compliance with health regulations.
"Those actions may not always be visible to the public, but they represent critical interventions that prevent unsafe food from reaching consumers and protect countless residents from potential illness. It is thus worth noting that Council continues to demonstrate an unwavering commitment to food safety through decisive enforcement of public health regulations."
Ferdinand Mwapopi, officer in charge for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has called for stronger science-based food safety systems, continuous training and greater support for informal food vendors to reduce foodborne illnesses and improve consumer protection in Namibia.
He said the FAO has helped strengthen import inspection systems for high-risk commodities, delivered post-harvest training to small‑scale fishing communities, and supported national food safety monitoring and laboratory capacity-building.
"FAO has provided technical support to strengthen import inspection systems for high-risk commodities, including fish and fishery products and canned meat. This support has contributed to developing robust protocols, building institutional capacity, and enhancing Namibia's ability to protect consumers from unsafe imports of food. This is the transformation of a burden, the risk of non-compliant products, into a solution, a credible and effective import control system."
The council facilitated the training of about 227 food handlers over the past year.