The Food Systems Summit has been set up to achieve action on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) which relies on a healthier, sustainable, and equitable food system. In order to achieve progress on these sustainability goals 5 key action tracks were developed which include:
- Ensure access to safe and nutritious food for all.
- Shift sustainable consumption patterns.
- Boost nature-positive production.
- Advocate equitable livelihoods.
- Build resilience to vulnerabilities, shocks, and stress
“The Action Tracks will draw on the expertise of actors from across the world’s food systems. Together, they will explore how key cross-cutting levers of change such as human rights, finance, innovation, and the empowerment of women and young people can be mobilized to meet the Summit’s objectives.” https://www.un.org/en/food-systems-summit/action-tracks
It must be noted that the action tracks are not induvial but rather intertwin with one another! There are many synergies and trade-offs between them. For example between action track 1 and 2. The synergy that exists is in order to make consumer patterns more sustainable food systems can be shortened and this can be achieved through food safety and tracing programs. One trade off between action track 1 and action track 2 is that increasing food safety could lead to more food waste which is not sustainable (Haddad et al., 2020). More synergies between other action tracks can be found in the table below.
Action track one provokes a lot of thought. How can we ensure access to safe and nutritious food for everyone? One innovation I believe the world needs to improve is in the area of food regulation and safety. Illness and death occur regularly across the globe due to contaminated food. Zoonoses or animal diseases are diseases that transfer from animals to humans as a result of direct contact through the environment or through food (Authority, 2017).
Food borne disease (FBD) outbreaks are common. They caused 600 million illnesses and 420,000 premature deaths in 2010 (Havelaar et al., 2015). Animals are often asymptomatic carriers of pathogens, excrete them with faeces. These pathogen are then in the environment where they may enter another induvial, thus delivering them to the environment. Therefore, pathogens may invade new individuals, as well as reside on vegetables and fruits. For example in the EU annually there are 200,000 cases of bacterial zoonoses reported and thee number are likely to be higher (Chlebicz et al., 2018). Food quality and safety needs the attention of both government agencies and consumers because of the major risks it poses to health and economic of the country (Witjaksono et al., 2018). Covid_19 , H1N1, Swine flu, Ebola and the Nipah virus, have occurred due to inadequate food systems safeguards to detect, trace and eliminate threats that are linked to zoonotic diseases (Aiyar and Pingali, 2020). The Covid_19 pandemic in the past year has shown us how quick disease can spread and the implications that can occur across many sectors including the health service, economics and the food supply chain.
There are many methods that can be used in order to improve food safety. One method is the improved implementation of food tracing, quality and regulation. There is need to develop technologies that can ensure the safety of food through all levels of the food safety chain including production, packaging, packaging, transportation, storage, distribution, and sale to the consumer in order to ensure harmful pathogens don’t enter the supply chain.
This could be achieved using a food system tracing service across the world similar to Bord Bia where the meat can be tracked from farm to fork across Ireland. Internet of Things (IoT) also provides a great opportunity to improve food safety. An app that can take a picture of the food and it can show the freshness of the food, which can help with the safety standards of the food (Witjaksono et al., 2018). An additional innovation to this app maybe be the inclusion of nutritional value of the foodstuff and how it should be cooked and eaten and the inclusion of a food tracing and standards system similar to Bord Bia in Ireland. This innovation could link action track with other action tracks. Other options may include the payment of farmers or community groups for what nutritious food they produce on their farms or gardens, adhering to food quality measures and standards on farm and at processing and transportation level, producing more on less ground hence decreasing their environmental footprint. Perhaps this app could include these changes and record the relevant details!!
I understand that apps and food tracking services may not be an affordable innovation in every country. In these areas farmer efforts should be made to ensure that there is a safe way of storage and cooking the food to reduce food Bourne diseases. This in my view is one innovation that can be used in order to improve health and ensure access to safe and nutritious food to everyone.
References:
Authority, E.F.S., 2017. The European Union summary report on trends and sources of zoonoses, zoonotic agents and food‐borne outbreaks in 2016. EFSa Journal, 15(12).
Chlebicz, A. and Śliżewska, K., 2018. Campylobacteriosis, salmonellosis, yersiniosis, and listeriosis as zoonotic foodborne diseases: a review. International journal of environmental research and public health, 15(5), p.863.
Aiyar, A. and Pingali, P. (2020) ‘Pandemics and food systems – towards a proactive food safety approach to disease prevention & management’, Food Security, 12(4), pp. 749-756.
Haddad, L., Nordhagen, S., Hendriks, S. and Qayyum, N. (2020) Discussion Starter
Action Track 1. Available at: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/unfss-at1-discussion_starter-dec2020.pdf.
Havelaar, A.H., Kirk, M.D., Torgerson, P.R., Gibb, H.J., Hald, T., Lake, R.J., Praet, N., Bellinger, D.C., De Silva, N.R., Gargouri, N. and Speybroeck, N., 2015. World Health Organization global estimates and regional comparisons of the burden of foodborne disease in 2010. PLoS medicine, 12(12), p.e1001923.
Witjaksono, G., Rabih, A.A.S., bt Yahya, N. and Alva, S., 2018, March. IOT for agriculture: food quality and safety. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 343, No. 1, p. 012023). IOP Publishing.
Additional Links
https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/unfss-at1-discussion_starter-dec2020.pdf