Convergence 5/10/17 Convergence 5/10/17

Food Safety Regulations and Street Food Culture Collide in Southeast Asian Cities

Street food is a staple of Southeast Asian culture and cuisine, but recently it has been threatened by heightened efforts to enforce food safety regulations. In cities across Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia, street vending has experienced a steep decline in the past few months at the hands of public health and safety campaigns.

Convergence 5/8/17 Convergence 5/8/17

Human Rights Watch – Clothing Companies in Bangladesh Not Complying with Safety Plan

After the 2013 garment factory collapse that killed 134 and injured over 1,000 workers in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi government and several U.N. agencies joined with global clothing companies in adopting a plan which would improve workplace safety across Bangladesh’s vast garment industry, the second largest in the world. Unfortunately, per New York-based group Human Rights Watch, many of these companies are not complying with the minimum disclosure guidelines outlined in the safety plan.

Convergence 5/5/17 Convergence 5/5/17

Leatherhead Food Research: EU Food Safety Law to Provide Framework for UK Regulations

Leatherhead Food Research managing director Chris Wells has said that post-Brexit UK food safety law will likely import much of its framework from existing EU regulations. He also stated that increased border security could lead to shorter shelf-lives of UK food and beverage exports, making those industries less competitive in the European marketplace; Europe is the UK’s biggest export market for food and beverage products

Convergence 5/4/17 Convergence 5/4/17

World Day for Safety and Health at Work Encourages Reporting of Workplace Casualty Data

April 28 was the annual World Day for Safety and Health at Work, an awareness-raising campaign started by the International Labour Organization in 2003 to focus attention on occupational safety & health issues around the world. The theme of this year’s event was the need for countries to collect and report reliable OSH data, in response to Target 8.8 of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which calls for countries to report “frequency rates of fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries, by sex and migrant status.”

Convergence 4/29/17 Convergence 4/29/17

After Numerous Deaths in Israel, Construction Safety Inspection Force to Grow from 18 to Over 2,500

With dozens of construction workers dying on the job in Israel every year, the Social Affairs Ministry wants local governments to start taking responsibility for their safety. On March 28, the Occupational Safety Administration sent letters to municipalities across Israel detailing three new orders to be followed immediately, one of which would make municipal building inspectors check for safety regulations, effectively increasing the number of construction safety inspectors from 18 to over 2500 - more than enough for the estimated 13,000 active worksites in the country.

About convergence

convergence is an environmental, health, safety and social management consultancy that specializes in multi-country (international) projects and programs. We are able to meet our clients’ needs on a global scale while recognizing the important regional differences that our clients face in conducting business. We are one of the leading international EHS audit consultancies; and our country health and safety legal compliance tools for offices, retail and service sectors, known as CORE, are the foremost resource of its kind.