CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health releases 2016 annual report

The CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) is pleased to announce the publication of its 2016 annual report, detailing the accomplishments and developments of the fifth and final year of the program’s first phase. The report highlights research and results from 2016, including

• the successful expansion of aflasafe, a biocontrol product helping to fight aflatoxin contamination across Africa;
• the Stories of Change in Nutrition case study series, which shares experiences to help countries understand how an enabling environment can combine with policies and programs to drive nutritional improvement;
• the first Agriculture, Nutrition and Health Academy Week, held in Addis Ababa, which brought together more than 300 participants from around the world to present research and learn from one another;
• a randomized trial of an integrated nutrition-sensitive agriculture program in Burkina Faso; and
• an update on the ongoing impacts of biofortification, with more than 140 varieties of 10 crops released in over 30 countries.

While the activities and accomplishments of each research flagship are laid out, readers will also find a spotlight on A4NH projects and programs in Africa, as well as an update on work related to gender.

Download the report

 

Workshop identifies strategies to improve food safety in low and middle income countries

Selling agricultural produce at Chimbiya Market, near Dedza in central Malawi (photo credit: ILRI/Mann).

 

On 24 May 2017, the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine hosted policymakers, researchers and donors at a workshop in Belgium under the theme Better targeting food safety investments in low- and middle-income countries.

Among the presenters were three scientists from the International Livestock Research Institute who presented on why food safety matters in development from an agri-food system perspective, the experience of food safety management in Vietnam, and economic and health outcomes and impacts of food safety interventions.

Over the course of the workshop, several major themes emerged:

1. Collaboration and knowledge sharing among the different sectors is critical and must be encouraged.
2. Consumers have to weigh the risks when considering what choices to make, and they need more information in order to make better decisions.
3. The problem of lack of access to safe foods is particularly acute for small children; not only are they disproportionately affected by foodborne illnesses and deaths, but they have the least control over their own exposure to this risk.

A detailed post about the workshop is available on the A4NH website.

 

Africa must take the lead in addressing global health challenges

zimbabweland

Credit: ILRI/Niels Teufel, Tanzania, 2014

The new Director General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is a former minister of health in Ethiopia. Africa – at last – is now at the centre of global health policy. This is good news, as persistent ill-health and threats of disease emergence remain, and a different approach to the standard western solutions is required. This must be centred on a One Health approach – where human, veterinary and ecosystem health are seen together. This will require new approaches to research, policy and practice, and must be a major priority for WHO and member states.

But realising these ideals is easier said than done. What might a One Health approach look like for Africa? Today a new Special Issue of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions (Biology) journal is published. Across 12 papers, this offers some clues. The issue is called…

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Join our webinar! Designing projects for improving nutrition through animal source foods—Tomorrow, 4 May

ILRI Clippings

The following announcement comes from Jennie Lane,
animal health and livelihoods technical advisor for Land O’Lakes International Development.

Land O’Lakes International Development and the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are pleased to announce a webinar option for their meeting tomorrow, 4 May, in Nairobi, Kenya, on Animal Source Foods for Nutrition Impact: Evidence and Good Practices for Informed Project Design. This one-day event will be held on the ILRI Nairobi campus from 8:30am to 5:00pm on Thu 4 May 2017. While the physical workshop is by invitation only due to space limitations, portions of the day’s presentations and discussions will be available as recordings later.  

Webinar invitation

Animal Source Foods for Nutrition Impact:

Evidence and Good Practices
for Informed Project Design

4 May 2017

Click here to register

The webinar will stream audio during the day from approximately 8:45am–5pm East Africa Time. A detailed agenda is available…

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New FAO report discusses options for influencing food environments for healthy diets

A man works in his vegetable field on the Barotse Floodplain, Zambia (photo credit: WorldFish/Anna Fawcus).

A new publication by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) focuses on influencing food environments for healthy diets through four areas: production of diversified food, food safety, food labelling and food-based dietary guidelines. FAO defines food environments as the settings with all the different types of food made available and accessible to people as they go about their daily lives.

The chapter on food safety was authored by Delia Grace, veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The chapter begins with an overview on foodborne diseases and the groups that are most vulnerable. It then goes on to discuss the health burden of—and trends in—foodborne diseases, the role of food safety in ensuring a healthy food environment and interventions that countries can take to improve food safety.

The recommendations put forward for improving food safety are:

• A ‘farm-to-fork’ approach is best for identifying control points
• Use risk-based approaches rather than hazard-based ones
• Where the informal sector predominates, professionalize rather than penalize
• Encourage the uptake of appropriate technology
• Improve food safety governance
• Take into account the costs of disease control
• Carry out holistic prioritization

The book was developed by FAO’s Nutrition and Food Systems Division as a follow-up activity to the Second International Conference on Nutrition held at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy on 19–21 November 2014.

Download the book

 

Vietnam launches report on better managing risks to food safety

ILRI news

Cover of the new World Bank food safety in Vietnam report: Please check back here in another three days to get a link to the report online.

This post is written by Chi Nguyen, communications officer for ILRI in East and Southeast Asia (c.nguyen [at] cgiar.org).

A report launched this week on managing risks to food safety in Vietnam was prepared by the World Bank and other research and development partners at the request of the Government of Vietnam. The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) was the lead technical partner in development of the report.

Food Safety Risk Management in Vietnam: Challenges and opportunities, launched on 27 Mar 2017, includes an urgent call for better management of food safety issues in Vietnam and more effective communications to raise public awareness of food safety issues. The report found that the primary cause of food-borne illness in Vietnam comes from…

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New Nutrition Knowledge Bank gives direct access to expert nutritional advice via mobile phones

ILRI news

Tanzanian woman on her cell phone (photo credit: CCAFS/Cecilia Schubert).

A new open-access Nutrition Knowledge Bank has been created as part of a GSMA mNutrition initiative to help tackle malnutrition in Africa and Asia. This collection of content on good nutritional practices includes factsheets and mobile messages for anyone to download and use. Funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the mNutrition project aims to deliver nutrition information to 3 million people in 12 developing countries.

Adequate nutrition is critical to the physical and mental development of children and to long-term human health, but one out of three people in developing countries suffers from micronutrient deficiency. Experts consider poor access to agricultural and health information a major barrier to the uptake of improved nutritional practises, particularly by women and vulnerable groups in marginalized areas.

mNutrition delivers content to people at risk of malnutrition in Bangladesh, Ghana…

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Agrilinks and Microlinks to host webinar on safety of animal-source foods for improved nutrition

Locally made beef stew sold in Bagnon market at Yopougon, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire (photo credit: ILRI/Valentin Bognan Koné).

What are the key food safety issues related to livestock production and animal-source foods and what are their potential impacts on human health and nutrition?

Join an upcoming joint Agrilinks and Microlinks webinar on 25 January 2017 at 0900–1100 hours EDT where experts will share effective approaches to improving food safety and quality related to livestock production.

Attendees will learn about improving food safety and quality throughout the livestock value chain including production methods, processing and storage technologies, risk assessments, policy impacts, opportunities for the private sector and consumer education.

• Hung Nguyen-Viet from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) will pay particular attention to the relationship between animal-source foods and the impact of foodborne disease, while also considering how traditional and gender roles in livestock and fish value chains can impact exposure and risk.
• Dennis Karamuzi will outline the steps taken by the Government of Rwanda and the Rwanda Dairy Competitiveness Project II to increase the supply of clean milk for rural and urban consumers.
• Silvia Alonso from ILRI will discuss the role of informal markets in meeting the nutrition needs of the most vulnerable communities and the tension between food safety, livelihoods and access to food that characterize such markets. She will present new research aimed to investigate how ‘light-touch’ interventions in informal dairy markets could give win-win outcomes on health and livelihoods.

Presenters will discuss new actions taking place in development that help provide clean, safe and affordable animal-source foods to poor urban and rural households. In addition, the webinar will touch on the role of animal-source foods in the global burden of foodborne disease and why the safety of animal-source foods plays an important role in food security.

Register for the webinar

 

Can the livestock sector find the elusive ‘win-win’ on drug resistance?

A livestock health worker prescribes drugs to a dairy farmer in Bangladesh (photo credit: IFPRI/Akram Ali, CARE Bangladesh).

An opinion piece by International Livestock Research Institute veterinary epidemiologist Delia Grace shines the spotlight on the global challenge of antimicrobial resistance and the need to tackle the problem while finding a balance between low access to antimicrobials (particularly in developing countries) and overuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture.

She writes:

“Antimicrobial use is a matter of access versus excess. Somehow, we must reduce the use of antimicrobial drugs in animals to tackle growing levels of drug resistance while ensuring that these life- and livelihood-saving treatments reach those who really need them.”

Read the complete article, Can the livestock sector find the elusive ‘win-win’ on drug resistance? Devex, 16 December 2016

 

ILRI scientist receives international award for ecohealth research

Hung Nguyen-Viet (left) receives the 2016 International Association for Ecology and Health (IEAH) ‘Exceptional Early Career Contribution to the Field of EcoHealth’ award from former IEAH president Jakob Zinsstag (photo credit: ILRI/Tarni Cooper).

Hung Nguyen-Viet, a senior scientist in food safety and ecohealth at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), was named the winner of the 2016 International Association for Ecology and Health (IAEH) Exceptional Early Career Contribution to the Field of EcoHealth Award together with Jonathan Kingsley of the University of Melbourne.

IAEH is a scholarly organization whose membership is drawn from all continents. Its mission is to strive for sustainable health of people, wildlife and ecosystems by promoting discovery, understanding and transdisciplinarity.

The award was given in recognition of Hung’s leadership, mentorship, research and writing on topics of domestic and global significance, including health, agriculture, food safety and infectious and zoonotic diseases at ILRI and at the Center for Public Health and Ecosystem Research (CENPHER), Hanoi University of Public Health.

Hung received the award at the closing ceremony of the 4th International One Health Congress and 6th IAEH Biennial Congress held in Melbourne, Australia on 3–7 December 2016.

“I strongly believe that ecohealth and One Health are good approaches to address complex health and environmental problems,” said Hung in his acceptance speech.

“Let us all work together and advance ecohealth,” he urged his colleagues.

Hung is a Vietnamese national and holds a PhD in Life and Environmental Sciences from Besançon, France. He co-founded and led CENPHER where he has been coordinating a regional program called Ecohealth Field Building Leadership Initiative in Southeast Asia from 2012 to 2016. In addition to his research role at ILRI, he is the institute’s acting regional representative for East and Southeast Asia based in Hanoi. He is also an honorary professor at Hanoi University of Public Health.

Congratulations, Hung!