Prabowo Ensures Tightening Free Nutrition Eating SOPs After Toxic Incidents

Presiden Prabowo Subianto (left) dan Pemimpin Utama Grup Forbes Steve Forbes (kanan) berdialog dalam sesi puncak Forbes Global CEO Conference 2025 di Jakarta, Rabu (15/10/2025). (Tim Media Presiden)

JAKARTA - President Prabowo Subianto emphasized that the government will tighten the implementation of standard operating procedures (SOP) in the implementation of the Free Nutrition Food (MBG) program to prevent repeated poisoning incidents and ensure food safety in all implementing kitchens.

"We are tightening supervision, SOP. We also buy new equipment, filters for water, test kits for each food produced, modern equipment for water sterilization, and umpang sterilization used," he said answering a question. Forbes Media Group Main Leader Steve Forbes at the peak session of the Forbes Global CEO Conference 2025 event in Jakarta, Wednesday, October 15 evening.

In front of more than 400 global company CEOs and innovators, he emphasized the government's determination to prevent repeated poisoning incidents.

In addition, he said, he always tried to suppress cases of poisoning so that there would be no more incidents (zero incident) in the implementation of the program in the future.

He said that until October 15, 2025, 11,900 MBG kitchens were recorded operating in various regions in Indonesia by providing free nutritious food to 35.4 million school children, toddlers, pregnant women, and breastfeeding mothers.

Regarding this number of achievements, he considered, almost equivalent to seven Singaporean populations.

"So, we feed Singapore's free (almost) seven (population times) every day. And, I admit, there are indeed obstacles. There was an incident of poisoning, but when we saw the comparison with the total amount of food distributed, the figure was quite low at around 0.0007 percent. However, that doesn't mean, it means, even one poisoning incident is unacceptable," he said.

He acknowledged the difficulty of achieving perfection in a massive program, as MBG does.

"In every human effort, to have a perfect record without one mistake, I think it's very rare. However, I don't want to find excuses. We are determined to prevent repeated incidents from approaching zero (incidents) as much as possible," said the President.

The issue of MBG was one of the highlights in the dialogue session between Steve Forbes and President Prabowo.

In the session entitled "A Meeting of Minds", President Prabowo also shared his views and thoughts on the Indonesian economy, Danantara, his commitment to eradicating corruption, and involvement in the peace agreement in Gaza, Palestine during the Sharm el-Sheikh Summit for Peace in Gaza in Sharm El-Sheikh City, Egypt, Monday (13/10).