Facilitating Food Traceability for Inclusive and Sustainable Development

Organized by: USAID – Feed the Future

Overview

Overview Food safety is one the most dangerous threat to public health, and creates significant inequalities in accessing safe, nutritious diets, particularly among the poor and vulnerable. The new WHO strategy highlights several drivers of change. Among those, access to traceability systems holds the potential to provide benefits for food and agricultural markets, including mitigating food safety risks, improving market access, and increasing productivity gains. Although globally integrated food systems have driven the trend for adoption of traceability, there are numerous barriers to adopting it, especially in low-middle income countries. In addition to placing LMIC at a competitive market disadvantage, it raises the risks of food contamination and fraud for consumers. In this health talk we would like to address traceability as a response system, and risk management options to address foodborne risks brought about by transformation and changes in global food systems and movement of food. We will explore the experience in the introduction, adoption, and implementation of traceability systems, as well as the challenges and opportunities to support traceability system to achieve inclusive and sustainable development goals.

Objectives

The main goal of this talk is to understand the factors that drive adoption and successful implementation of traceability systems.

1. What does a conducive enabling environment for food traceability looks like? Include the role of mandatory regulations — driven by public policy objectives and enforcement capacity – as well as voluntary market standards — driven by increased consumer demand for verifiable food safety, quality, integrity, and origin.

2. What technical capacities as well as the access to financial resources are needed to implement traceability systems? Technology includes the local availability of a user-friendly platform to meet objectives/requirements, as well as information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, which influences rural connectivity, reliability, and speed.

Agenda

• 5 min - Introduction by moderator, Dr Lourdes Martinez Romero.
• 4 min - Opening remarks by Carol Wilson, Director, Center for Nutrition USAID/ Resilience and Food Security Bureau.
• 12 min Presentation by FDA – Dr Adam Friedlander, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Office of Food Policy and Response (OFPR).
• 12 min - Existing regional effort – The African Union efforts to adopt a common Food Safety Strategy and Traceability – Dr John Oppong-Otoo, African Union Inter-African Bureau for Animal Resources (AU-IBAR).
• 12 min – Experience from partner countries – Ethiopia case study - Dr Masresha Tessema, Director of Food Science and Nutrition Research Directorate, Ethiopian Public Health Institute Dr. Heran Gerba, Director General, Ethiopia Food and Drug Authority.
• 15 min – Q&A.