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