Dubai Municipality was successful in reducing the spoilage of food in the emirate in 2017 as the civic body was able to reduce it by 73% last year.
“We have reduced food spoilage to 3,670 tons in 2017, compared with 13,586 tons in 2016,” said Food Safety Department head of food trade control section Dr. Essam Al Hashimi.
Al Hashimi said the section recorded a series of achievements in 2017 that contributed to raising the level of practices applied in the field of food trade control.
“The unprecedented achievement in reducing food wastage has been the result of developing and implementing a series of alternative solutions to avoid the food getting damaged. We have carried out recycling of 1,953 tons of food and 1,426 tons of food was transferred to the UAE Food Bank during the year 2017,” he said.
Al Hashimi also stressed on the Section’s achievements in the field of improving productivity. The number of food shipments imported during 2017 increased to 351,660 compared to 345,291 in 2016. This contributed to the diversification of imported food items as the number of types of food items imported was 2,099,217 in 2017, compared to 1,801,501 in 2016.
Al Hashimi added that the registration of food items in the Municipality’s electronic system for controlling imported and exported food witnessed a continuous increase during 2017. “A total of 633,850 food categories were registered in the system last year, compared to 532,128 food items in 2016. In addition, there was a continuous increase in the registration of food companies in the system as 15,973 companies registered in 2017, compared to 12,657 in 2016,” he concluded.
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