Establishing and Promoting Quality Tourism Standards for the Caribbean

Contact: Rose Marie Harris

Monday, September 10, 2001 - Saint Lucia is one of the first Caribbean countries involved in developing a Food Safety Awareness Programme, a joint venture of the Caribbean Alliance for Sustainable Tourism (CAST) and the Caribbean Epidemiology Centre (CAREC).

The programme is just one component of a Quality Tourism Project for the Caribbean.  According to Training Specialist for the project, Bernice Dyer Regis, the three year project seeks to strengthen the overall quality and competitiveness of the tourism industry in the Caribbean through the establishment and promotion of quality standards and systems designed to ensure healthy, safe and environmentally conscious products and services.

“We are looking at the issue of due diligence, also referred to as reasonable care.  Those are actions that industry players can take so as to reduce the risk of food-borne illness outbreaks at their facility.  In the region so far, last year we had seven outbreaks of food-borne illnesses that resulted in the temporary closure of two facilities and we just want to prevent a recurrence of such incidents in the Caribbean… We are dealing with clients who are very litigious and we know that every little incident can result in some serious lawsuits.  We have had a seventy-five-million-dollar class action lawsuit brought against a facility in the region three years ago and it took them almost two years to get back on their feet and we just want to avoid these incidents taking place in the Caribbean,” Regis said.

According to Regis there are simple preventative measures that can be undertaken to avoid food borne illness such as the monitoring of time and temperature.  “We want to sensitize them on the little things that they can do such as taking temperature logs and this will allow them to prove due diligence in a court of law,” the tourism official remarked.

The key activities being undertaken as part of this project are continuous assessment of the health, safety and resource conservation needs of the tourism industry and implementation of an ill-health monitoring system and the establishment and validation of Caribbean-wide health, safety and resource conservation standards.

Through the Caribbean Project training will be made available to a core of industry managers, workers and a cadre of auditors and trainers.

Under the project a total of US$2.5 million has been provided through funding provided by the Inter American Development Bank Multilateral Investment Fund, CAREC/CAST and the Caribbean Development Bank. 

-end-

[ Home ] [ Up ] [ Search for 2001 Press Releases ] [Site Help]

© 2001 Government Information Service. All rights reserved.

Read our privacy guidelines.