Food Safety Begins with a Healthy Environment

Have you ever wondered where the water used to wash your favourite food ingredients comes from? Or what the condition of the soil is like where organic vegetables and fruit are grown before they finally appear on the dining table? For most modern society members who embrace a healthy lifestyle, attention usually stops at nutrition labels, calorie counts, or preservative-free claims. Yet, there is one determining factor that is far more fundamental but often overlooked: the quality of the environment from upstream to downstream.

The Food and Drug Monitoring Agency (BPOM) has reminded the public that the trend of healthy lifestyles and culinary awareness will be meaningless if we neglect environmental sustainability. This crucial issue surfaced at the annual REI’s Key Client Network 2025–2026 event initiated by PT REI Sistem Indonesia Group in Jakarta, where food safety standards and environmental sustainability were examined in depth with industry stakeholders.

As the front line of drug and food supervision in the country, BPOM sees that the challenges facing the food industry have now shifted to the ecological realm. The Director of Processed Food Production Supervision at BPOM, Sondang Widya Estikasari, highlighted that cross-sector collaboration, from government and business actors to academics, is an absolute key to building a food ecosystem that is safe, of high quality, and highly nutritious.

Sondang underscored the close relationship between environmental health and the safety of food consumed by the public daily. “Food safety is highly dependent on environmental conditions. If the upstream environment is not maintained, such as water quality and raw materials from nature, then the final product is also at risk of being unsafe. By encouraging the industry to pay attention to environmental and sustainability principles, we are actually safeguarding food safety from the supply of raw materials to processing in accordance with Good Processed Food Production Methods (CPPOB),” she said in a written statement received by Republika on Thursday (30/7/2026).

This statement reminds us that the food we consume is a reflection of the earth where it grows. If nature is polluted, it is impossible for the resulting processed food products to be truly safe for the body. Therefore, the implementation of CPPOB standards alone is considered insufficient if the industry is not accompanied by genuine concern for environmental preservation.