Food poisoning and diarrhoeal infection are the two leading causes of food-borne illnesses in India. Moreover, due to lack of laboratories and shortage of manpower, many outbreaks of the diseases are not investigated properly.

This year, with food safety as a theme of World Health Day that will be observed on April 7, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended a slew of measures to make food safe for consumption.
According to the data provided by the Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme of the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, there were 306 outbreaks of food poisoning and 344 of diarrhea between 2011 and 2014. This meant that 46 per cent of the total outbreaks were due to food borne diseases.

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