Unsafe Food Causes Losses of up to Rp 250.5 trillion

Contaminated food not only adversely affects the health of the population, but also harms the economy to the tune of Rp 70.5 trillion to Rp 250.5 trillion a year.

KOMPAS/PRIYOMBODO

A student at SD Negeri Joglo 01, Kembangan, West Jakarta, enjoys snacks while waiting to be picked up, Monday (30/1/2023). From 10 million to 22 million people in Indonesia have diarrhea due to contaminated food and water.

JAKARTA, KOMPAS — From 10 million to 22 million people in Indonesia have diarrhea due to contaminated food and water. The economic losses are projected at Rp 70.5 trillion to Rp 250.5 trillion in a year. The losses can be much greater because the long-term effects of food and water that are contaminated can cause more than 200 diseases other than nutritional problems including stunting in children.

Diseases transmitted through food (foodborne Illness, FBI), both due to microorganisms and chemicals, have become the main burden on public health, but are often neglected. According to a report of the World Health Organizational (WHO) in 2015, around 600 million people, or almost one in 10 people in the world, fall ill after consuming polluted food and 420,000 die every year.

Indonesia is one of the countries that has a very high health burden because of diseases transmitted through food. "Cases and economic losses due to contaminated food in Indonesia are also very high. People poisoned by food in Indonesia are like waiting for the turn of the lottery," said Winiati P Rahayu, a food security expert from IPB University on Friday (24/2/2023).

Diseases due to food in Indonesia that are commonly found are diarrhea, vomiting, typhus and hepatitis A.

Again and again

Based on the results of the Health Ministry's Basic Health Research in 2018, the prevalence of diarrhea for all age groups in Indonesia was 8 percent, toddlers 12.3 percent and in infants 10.6 percent.

In addition to cases of diarrhea, which is a daily health problem in the community, extraordinary events (KLB) of food poisoning also repeatedly occur, which indicates food safety problems in Indonesia. Based on data from the Health Ministry, there were 76 KLB of food poisoning in Indonesia in 2021 with the number of people affected reaching 3,130 and a fatality rate of 0.48 percent.

Winiati said there was a lack of attention to food safety issues, because, among other reasons, the impact and magnitude of losses were not realized by policy makers and the community.

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Referring to WHO guidelines, the KLB data only represents a small portion of the overall burden of the disease. Therefore, calculations based on outbreaks tend to underestimate the actual losses triggered by unsafe food in Indonesia.

Together with Stephen LW On from the Faculty of Agriculture and Life Sciences of Lincoln University, New Zealand, Winiati then calculated the burden and costs of diarrhea caused by food in Indonesia. Research reports published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Food Safety and Security in 2017 found that the total estimated cases of diarrhea due to innate food diseases in Indonesia ranged from 10.1 million to 22.4 million cases a year. Meanwhile, the economic losses were projected at Rp 70.5 trillion to Rp 250.5 trillion.

DOKUMENTASI POLSEK TENJO

A total of 87 residents reported food poisoning at a wedding reception in Babakan Village, Tenjo, Bogor Regency, West Java, Friday (10/2/2023). Some of them had to get treatment at the Tenjo Health Center

In addition, based on Winiati’s studies published in the Journal of Food Science and Microbiology in 2017, the economic losses from food poisoning KLB in Indonesia in 2013 amounted to US$78 million, or around Rp 1.19 trillion at the current exchange rate. These losses were calculated based on direct healthcare costs, direct non-health costs and indirect non-health costs.

This calculation was developed from a reference to the experience of several countries, namely the number of KLB cases of food poisoning in 2013 multiplied by 100. This multiplication factor was based on WHO modeling that only 1 percent of the total cases of food poisoning in developing countries is registered.

Losses

Kompas Research and Development (Litbang) uses this method to calculate the cost of economic losses based on food poisoning KLB reported by the Drug and Food Supervisory Agency in 2021. There were 50 food poisoning KLB in Indonesia in 2021 which was projected to consist of 5,000 cases affecting 256,900 people. A total of 178,300 people experienced illness and 1,000 people died.

With this method, the economic losses of the food poisoning outbreaks in Indonesia in 2021 reached Rp 109.6 billion. The value of losses declined compared with 2013 due to the fact that in 2021 there was no cost of losing brand image in the eyes of consumers or withdrawal of products with the largest portion of losses.

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> Food Diversity Marginalized

Specifically, Jarir At Thobari from the Department of Pharmacology and Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Public Health and Nursing at Gadjah Mada University and the team examined the burden of health costs of acute diarrhea cases in children under five. The results of the study were reported in The Lancet in February 2022.

This study was based on the prevalence of diarrhea among children under five reported by the Health Ministry in 2018 amounting to 17 percent of around 4 million children examined.

As a result, if the cost of an inpatient case is around Rp 1.7 million, the estimated total economic burden of inpatient children under five due to acute diarrhea is more than Rp 457 billion per year.

DIREKTUR RUMAH SAKIT SENTOSA, KOLONEL (PURN) FRITS M.R UNTUK KOMPAS

As many as 55 Marsudirini Middle and High School students in Bogor Regency were treated at Sentosa Hospital due to food poisoning, Monday (20/2/2023).

Even though the calculated economic burden is large, the impact of food insecurity can be greater. This is because the bad effects of food in the long term have still not been calculated.

This intestinal infection is indeed harmless, but the quality of life must be disrupted,

The WHO said unsafe food that contains bacteria, viruses, parasites, or harmful chemicals cause more than 200 diseases, ranging from diarrhea to cancer.

An internist who is also the dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Indonesia, Ari Fahrial Syam, said that when someone often experiences diarrhea, their intestines become sensitive. "We handle these cases very often. This intestinal infection is indeed harmless, but the quality of life must be disrupted," he said.

In addition, cases of gastric cancer in Indonesia are currently also showing an increasing trend. Even though there is no comprehensive study of this, food ingredients that are contaminated with chemicals such as formalin, borax and heavy metals that are often found in food are also suspected of contributing.

Product rejection

Chairman of the Indonesian Food Security Profession Association Roy Sparringa said that in addition to being marked by a high number of cases of diarrhea, the prevalence of food contamination in Indonesia was also indicated by the many rejections of Indonesian exports of food products to other countries.

Anissa Aprilia Nurkhasanah's research and a team from the Department of Fisheries at the Faculty of Agriculture at Gadjah Mada University (2022) showed 2,318 cases in the 2010-2020 period of Indonesian fisheries exports to the United States being rejected and 79 cases in Europe. Dirty products and salmonella contamination contributed to 80 percent of the rejections of fishery products in the US. For Europe, the reasons for rejection were mainly due to mercury contamination, bad temperature control, salmonella, histamine and cadmium.

"If our exported fish products are strictly checked, what about the domestic market? Indeed there is uji petik [a pick test] here, but this is inadequate," he said. (LITBANG KOMPAS)

This article was translated by Hyginus Hardoyo.