Jakarta (ANTARA) - Indonesia's National Agency of Drug and Food Control (BPOM) will strengthen the monitoring of nutritional value information on food labels, the agency's head, Penny K. Lukito, said at the commemoration of World Food Day on Tuesday.

During an online event entitled 'World Food Day, Our Actions are Our Future', she said that the monitoring of food labels will be strengthened to educate the public on nutrition.

She urged BPOM to continue to edify the public on the importance of checking the nutrition content of foods.

According to Lukito, if people understand the importance of nutrition, they will be more selective in choosing food and that would hopefully incentivize food producers to produce quality and nutritive products.

"We will figure out how to turn educating and creating a nutritional value label into a form of competition," she informed.

The problem of food security is tightly linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), she remarked.

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She opined that following proper processes for food production, food distribution, marketing authorization, and labeling is a form of collective effort toward achieving domestic food security.

Lukito also asserted BPOM's commitment to realizing the motto 'Better Production, Better Nutrition, Better Environment and Better Life' of the 2021 World Food Day.

"Happy World Food Day to us all. Of course, the purpose of our meeting today is to show our collective commitment in supporting the purpose of holding World Food Day each year," she elaborated.

For this year's World Food Day, BPOM held a variety of activities such as virtual launches, virtual exhibitions, camps for micro, small, and medium enterprises, and competitions, she informed.

World Food Day is celebrated to commemorate the date when the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was founded and to highlight problems surrounding hunger and food security.

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Translator: Anita Dewi, Fadhli Ruhman
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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