The essentials for food system transformations

The urgency of transforming food systems to make them more sustainable is clear. How to get there is often not as obvious. What does it take to succeed? One key part is food safety. Without food safety there is no food security, and without food security, a food system is weak and unstable and thus unsustainable.  First, the right policies and regulations; second, knowledge sharing and learning to develop and enact the necessary policy and regulatory frameworks. And third, identifying and implementing the right incentives to ensure that those involved in establishing food safety systems are focused and follow the right steps.

This was the subject of the December 8 webinar that IFC co-hosted with the Standards and Trade Development Facility. We examined what should be considered when replicating the experiences of other countries. We discussed the challenges that developing and emerging economies are facing during their food safety transformations. We shared the World Bank Group’s food safety agenda and introduced a new IFC learning course called “Food Safety Reforms, Learning from the Best: The New Zealand Food Safety System in Case Studies” that has been launched with the support of the Facility for Investment Climate Advisory Services (FIAS) this year.

(You can watch the webinar here).  

We were lucky to have speakers from three continents who discussed food system reforms based on the experiences of Chile, Kenya and Ukraine. I want to highlight some of the key points from the discussion we had.

• Food safety systems don’t reform themselves. It is the people who do reforms. Thus, knowledge sharing and learning is absolutely essential, especially practical learning. At IFC we see a growing demand for detailed, country-based examples of food system transformations and food safety reforms. We do our best to meet the demand by developing and sharing learning courses and publications. I’m sure the resources developed by IFC Food Safety Global Advisory will be helpful for those who are engaged in food systems transformations;
•  The benefits of investments in national food safety systems should be clear for all developing countries because unsafe food means huge public health costs. Based on The Safe Food Imperative, unsafe food in low- and middle-income countries results in a productivity loss of some US$95 billion per year. The amazing thing is that much of the health and economic burden caused by unsafe food can be avoided through preventive measures, investments, and behavioral changes. Learning from countries with sound food safety systems and efficient food safety policies is what developing and emerging economies need to do when building their national systems. This approach will help them avoid mistakes, especially mistakes done by other countries implementing food safety reforms;
• While the incentives for the formal sector to improve food safety is clear, we must figure out incentives for the informal sector. The informal sector is huge in many developing countries and we have not yet understood how to successfully convince informal food sector players to follow food safety practices and make it a priority;
• Collaboration of public and private sectors in food safety management requires new formats, where governmental interference is reduced and private sector bear most of responsibilities. For instance, voluntary third part certification (vTPA) that is now being piloted in Latin America and Africa  by STDF can be of great use for regulatory authorities, enabling them to use state budgets more efficiently by targeting inspections depending on the risk and to direct the resources of national food control systems more effectively. IFC’s e-course on the New Zealand food safety system, which was introduced during the webinar, provides another example of the evolution of the roles of public and private sectors in national food safety systems. The e-course explains why and how the country changed 'command and control' system with a high level of government intervention in food safety to a regulatory model made up of the regulator, the verifier and the industry operator.  Of course, it’s not a must to implement New Zealand approach in full scale, but it is worth to learn what it is, how it operates and benefits it brought in New Zealand.

The last point I want to share is something that is common to most developing and emerging economies, regardless of their geographical location. Our speakers from Africa and Latin America emphasized that small and medium sized businesses want to follow food safety practices, protect consumers, and develop business. However, often they don’t know how to do this: They lack the technical and financial support and they lack knowledge. It is clear that knowledge sharing and capacity building for stakeholders across the food value chain is an essential part of building sustainable food systems.