Food safety is critical to nutrition security

20.jan.10
SciDev.net

We must focus on food safety as well as nutrition to feed the hungry - but there are
many barriers to safe eating, writes the WHO's Jørgen Schlundt.
Most scientists agree that the world's farmers produce enough food to cater for the
Earth's six billion people. The fact that more than one billion people suffer from
hunger and undernutrition is widely thought to be a result of inadequate
distribution.
But we will never eliminate global hunger by simply improving our capacity to spread
agricultural produce among all inhabitants unless we can also guarantee the quality
of supplies.
The concept of nutrition security - ensuring access to food that is nutritious as
well as sufficient - is increasingly being used to stress the importance of the
quality of food for people of all ages.
Poor nutrition weakens immune systems and contributes to half the deaths associated
with infectious disease among children aged under five in developing countries.
Undernutrition in the early years of life can also impair long-term cognitive
development and productivity at work.
Micronutrient deficiencies also have severe health impacts - vitamin A deficiency is
the leading cause of blindness in children, affecting up to half a million children
each year. Iodine deficiency causes brain damage and iron deficiency is responsible
for anaemia in two billion people worldwide.
Safety and nutrition links
But there is another aspect of food quality that is equally important - safety.
Nutrition and food safety are inextricably linked, particularly in places where food
supplies are insecure. When food becomes scarce, hygiene, safety and nutrition are
often ignored as people shift to less nutritious diets and consume more 'unsafe
foods' - in which chemical, microbiological, zoonotic and other hazards pose a
health risk.
Unsafe food, whether arising from poor quality supplies or inadequate treatment and
preparation, increases the risk of foodborne infections such as diarrhoea. These
infections have a much higher impact on populations of poor nutritional status,
where diarrhoea can easily lead to serious illness and death.
Indeed, poor nutrition and foodborne disease often join hands in a vicious cycle of
worsening health. For example, poor nutritional status weakens resistance against
diarrhoea, which, in turn, leads to the uptake of fewer nutrients and poorer
nutritional status.
Food safety must be systematically integrated into policies and interventions to
improve nutrition and food availability.
Rolling out food standards
Arguably, the first stepis for all countries to adopt and adhere to international
standards on food safety, such as those developed by the WHO and Food and
Agriculture Organization through the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
Efficient food safety interventions often require coordinated action throughout the
food safety chain. For example, if chickens are infected with salmonella at a farm,
how they are then treated at the slaughterhouse, in the shop or market and in the
kitchen all determine the number of bacteria that reach consumers, and so the number
of people getting sick (or dying).
Likewise, if we can follow the level of a hazardous chemical in the different stages
of food production we will also learn where to introduce the most efficient
prevention measures.
Importantly, international standards are non-negotiable and should apply equally to
populations - an acceptable level of food contamination is not higher for starving
people than for others.
There should not be one framework for food that is exported and another for food
consumed locally as has previously been the case even in some developed countries.
By the same token, there should not be one framework for populations with sufficient
nutrition and another for hungry ones.
Coherent and holistic national food safety systems would not only improve health in
countries with insecure food supplies - they would also help development and boost
food trade. A national system that can live up to international standards will
ensure that local products can be exported to other markets.
Breaking barriers
But there are many obstacles to building efficient food safety systems, not least
the lack of political awareness. Food safety as a local health and development
problem is still rarely acknowledged by decision makers in many developing
countries, and is often given little priority by major donors.
Recent food safety scandals and a growing knowledge base are slowly making a change.
When the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) scandal hit Europe in the 1990s, it
led to a major overhaul of the system. Likewise, new data on antimicrobial
resistance has led to the discontinuation of antimicrobial growth promoters in some
countries.
It is also clear that one major obstacle to improving food safety systems,
particularly in developing countries, is the lack of data on the burden of foodborne
diseases both globally and within nations. Such data are critical to establishing
evidence-based national and international food safety policies.
The WHO, guided by an external expert group,is now working to address this gap by
collecting data on foodborne diseases across the world by age, sex and region. It
hopes to publish a global foodborne disease burden report and atlas in 2011-12.
We have little hope of achieving the Millennium Development Goal of reducing child
mortality by two-thirds by 2015 unless developing countries - in collaboration with
donor agencies - recognise the need for, and invest in, improvements in water and
food safety, and nutrition security.
We need an integrated approach to food where food safety and nutrition are
systematically introduced into mainstream food system policies and interventions
across the world.
Producing safe food is not simply a tool for boosting agriculture or trade - it is
an essential ingredient for public health.