Why Food Safety Depends On Every Link In The Supply Chain

Article Published By Danielle Nierenberg June 6, 2025
Article Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daniellenierenberg/2025/06/06/food-safety-depends-on-every-link-in-the-supply-chain/

For communities to be nourished, their food supply must be safe to eat.

This sounds obvious, but it’s worth repeating, because every year, about 1 in 10 people worldwide (or about 600 million people) become sick from contaminated food, and 420,000 lose their lives. About 125,000 of those deaths annually are children under 5 years old—a disproportionate tragedy that comes at the expense of our future.

And in low- and mid-income countries, US$110 billion is lost every year in productivity and medical expenses resulting from unsafe food, per World Health Organization (WHO) data. Addressing food safety is truly crucial not just to our lives but to our livelihoods, our economic success, and the well-being of every aspect of the food system.

World Food Safety Day, on June 7, is a perfect opportunity for everyone around the globe to recommit to ensuring a safe food supply for all.

“Food safety is not just about preventing harm,” says Markus Lipp, Senior Food Safety Officer at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. “It is about creating confidence and trust in the food we eat, in the systems that protect us, that protect food safety and in the institutions that serve the public good for safe food.”

So how do we ensure the future of food is safe?

First: Food safety is not isolated—every link along the food chain must prioritize safety. Food safety begins on fields and farms, with healthy soils and positive growing practices, and continues through processing, transportation, cooking, and serving.

This whole-system approach can be truly transformative. In fact, many of the 200+ diseases “that we know can be carried by food are preventable and sometimes even eradicable,” says Luz María De Regil, Director of the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety at WHO.

Second: We can’t just respond to challenges that currently exist; we have to be prepared to face unprecedented and complex challenges to food safety as the climate crisis worsens. According to the WHO, the changing climate will affect the persistence and occurrence of bacteria, viruses, parasites, harmful algae, and fungi—and the vectors that spread them.

“We’re going to have emerging pathogens coming in, especially given that the climate is changing…microbes like hot, humid, wet environments,” said Barbara Kowalcyk, an Associate Professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health.