New book chapter explores how trade liberalization affects nutrition and health

Locally made beef stew sold in Bagnon market at Yopougon, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Informal food trade is less amenable to regulation and may be an important cause of foodborne disease (photo credit: ILRI/Valentin Bognan Koné).

The World Health Organization last month (August 2015) published a book on trade and health that provides useful background information for health policymakers to formulate a national response to trade and health-related issues, especially within the context of liberalization of global trade.

Trade liberalization influences the entire food supply chain. Changes along the food supply chain in turn influence the environment in which consumers make choices about the food they eat. These choices affect the diets of consumers and, therefore, the prevalence of foodborne diseases, undernutrition, and obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases.

There are also indirect effects of trade liberalization on human nutrition and health. These include the effects on household incomes and the inadvertent entry of emerging human, animal and plant diseases.

However, assessing national-level nutrition and health impacts of trade and trade policy is a complex affair. Therefore, in a chapter on trade liberalization, food, nutrition and health, the authors discuss four basic steps that governments can adopt to assess the potential impact of trade liberalization on food-related health and nutrition. These are:

• an assessment of the types of impacts trade liberalization could have on a selected sub-set of key nodes in the food supply chain
• an assessment of the subsequent impact on food safety, food availability, food prices and food marketing
• an assessment on the food-related health outcomes themselves, namely foodborne diseases, undernutrition, and obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases
• an assessment of the implications of trade agreements on the policy space required to address these health conditions

The chapter also puts forward a number of opportunities for using trade policy to improve nutrition and health.

The chapter Trade liberalization, food, nutrition and health was authored by Corinna Hawkes, Honorary Fellow at the City University London Centre for Food Policy and Senior Adviser at the Leverhulme Center for Integrative Research into Agriculture and Health; Delia Grace, Program Leader, Food Safety and Zoonoses, International Livestock Research Institute and Anne Marie Thow, Lecturer in health policy at the Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney.

Access the book, Trade and Health: Towards building a National Strategy, edited by Richard Smith, Chantal Blouin, Zafar Mirza, Peter Beyer and Nick Drager.

 

Ways forward for food safety in countries bearing the brunt of the world’s food-borne diseases

ILRI news

Roadside meat for sale in Nairobi, Kenya (picture on Flickr by Andrew Chipley).

This article is written by Delia Grace

A new paper on food safety in low- and middle-income countries was published today (27 Aug 2015). The paper is based on a longer learning resource commissioned by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), which will appear shortly. Both publications reflect what the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and its partners have learned over the last ten years since adopting a framework of risk analysis for assessing, managing and communicating about food safety in developing countries.

Some conclusions
The evidence indicates that low- and middle-income countries bear the brunt of food-borne disease; that developing-country consumers are concerned about food-borne diseases; that most of the known burden of food-borne disease comes from biological hazards; and that most food-borne disease results from eating contaminated perishable foods sold…

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New study recommends continued research on the possible role pigs could play in transmitting Ebola in Uganda

ILRI news

The map above shows high-risk areas due to a spatial overlap of three proposed risk factors for zoonotic Ebola virus transmission in Uganda: modelled zoonotic niche, domestic pig distribution and high numbers of people living in extreme poverty; the map is taken from a paper published in Transboundary and Emerging Diseases, Assessing the potential role of pigs in the epidemiology of Ebola virus in Uganda, by C Atherstone, E Smith, P Ochungo, K Roesel, D Grace, 27 August 2015 (figure credit: ILRI).

This article is written by two of this paper’s authors: Christine Atherstone, an ILRI researcher based in Uganda who leads this work and is lead author, and Delia Grace, who leads ILRI’s Food Safety and Zoonoses research program.

A new risk assessment paper, Assessing the potential role of pigs in the epidemiology of the Ebola virus in Uganda, was published in the science journal

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ILRI supports Thailand symposium on food safety, zoonoses and EcoHealth

ILRI Asia

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) recently supported and co-organized a symposium on food safety, zoonoses and EcoHealth in Thailand.

ILRI scientists Fred Unger and Hung Nguyen with Pudji Astuti, Vice Dean, Vet Faculty, University of Gadjah Mada (second from left) and other researchers from the region at the Chiang Mai symposium (Photo credit: ILRI/Duong Van Nhiem).

The fourth Food Safety and Zoonoses Symposium for Asia Pacific, which also included the second Regional EcoHealth Symposium, held 3-5 August 2015 in Chiang Mai, brought together experts to share knowledge and information on food safety and zoonoses and to provide a platform for recent EcoHealth research.

This year’s theme was ‘Professional learning community for human–animal–environmental health’.

The symposium focused on several important themes including assessment of biological and chemical risks in food system, antimicrobial resistance in humans and animals, emergence of zoonoses and vector-borne diseases, innovation in surveillance and epidemiological tools…

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Towards professionalizing—not criminalizing—informal sellers of milk and meat in poor countries

ILRI news

Transporting fresh milk by motorcycle in Tanzania (photo credit: ILRI/Ben Lukuyu).

‘. . . Researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners have developed and piloted an institutional innovation—a training, certification and branding scheme for informal value chain actors—with good potential to improve the safety of animal-source foods sold in informal markets.

‘Past development policy often focused on formal markets, which at best meant neglect of informal markets and often resulted in harassment and penalties for informal agents.

While in the long term markets are likely to formalize, in the short term, interventions that seek to suppress informal markets can be both ineffective and antipoor.

‘Recent evidence suggests that a more constructive, incentive-based approach to informal markets could improve their contribution to economic development as well as increase compliance with standards in areas such as the environment, public health, and labor.

‘There is a growing recognition of…

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Reducing human exposure to aflatoxins in poor countries: Towards new technologies and practices

ILRI news

ILRI graduate fellow Taishi Kayano, from Rakuno Gakuen University, collects milk samples from a Kenya dairy farmer as part of a scoping survey of aflatoxins in the feed-dairy chain in Kenya (photo credit: ILRI/Taishi Kayano).

A new paper describes and assesses the strength of a theory of change for how adoption of farm-level technologies and practices for aflatoxin mitigation can help reduce aflatoxin exposure among consumers.

‘Aflatoxins, naturally occurring fungal toxins that contaminate maize and groundnuts and other crops, pose both acute and chronic risks to human health. Aflatoxins are odourless and colourless and impossible to detect accurately without appropriate testing technologies. Both humans and animals are affected, and there is an additional risk of aflatoxin transmission through animal-source foods, especially milk, from animals fed contaminated feed.

‘Consumption of very high levels of aflatoxins can result in acute illness and death. Chronic exposure, which causes the greater human health burden…

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Free e-version of book on food safety in informal markets in sub-Saharan Africa now available

Safe Food, Fair Food

We are pleased to announce that the book, Food Safety and Informal Markets: Animal Products in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Kristina Roesel and Delia Grace of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), is now freely available online as an open access resource.

The book was published in October 2014 and officially launched in January 2015. It highlights key messages of the ILRI-led Safe Food, Fair Food project (2008-2011) and 25 proof-of-concept studies on the safety of milk, meat and fish in eight countries across sub-Saharan Africa. The project was funded by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and implemented by local partners and students.

Access the PDF version of the book.

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Designing practical ways to help the urban poor make choices that improve their nutrition

ILRI news

Paula Dominguez-Salas, above, is a post-doctoral scientist of ILRI and the Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health (LCIRAH) researching gender and nutrition issues in Nairobi slums (photo credit: ILRI).

Written by Paula Dominguez-Salas

To improve interventions in food systems of the urban poor, scientists at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) are investigating urban food and nutritional choices in two slums in Nairobi, Kenya. Their aim is to develop interventions that help people make food choices that improve their nutrition while staying within their low household food budgets and access.

Access to healthy diets is at the heart of good nutrition and the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Foods of animal origin are the only source of vitamin B12 and have good quality protein, preformed vitamin A, highly bioavailable iron, and zinc, in addition to good profiles in other micronutrients. Animal-source foods are…

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ILRI’s training program leads to increased milk yield for dairy farmers in Guwahati, India

ILRI Asia

Indian newspaper The Telegraph reported on Monday, 20 July 2015, that a program by researchers from the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) that trained smallholder dairy producers in Guwahati in Assam, India led to an increase in milk production through improved methods and practices of dairy farming.

The milk market in Assam is dominated by informal and unorganized milk market actors, consisting of producers, vendors, sweet makers and cottage processors. Altogether they handle 97% of the total milk market but are not formally recognized and are not integrated in the milk value chain in the state. Milk quality and milk safety are also key concerns for governments and consumers alike.

According to the article, the increase in dairy productivity was reported in an impact assessment carried out by a team of students from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in 2014.

On 17 July 2015, a certification distribution ceremony was…

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Tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century–The Lancet

In a new paper published on 23 June 2015, the 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change says that tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of this century, and puts forward 10 recommendations for governments to take action in the next 5 years.

ILRI news

Marble figurine of a woman, from the Cyclades, Aegean Sea, early Bronze Age, about 2600-2400 BC (via the British Museum).

The 2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change was formed to map out the impacts of climate change and the necessary policy responses. The central finding from the Commission’s work is that tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century. See a summary of the key messages of the paper, published this week in The Lancet (22 Jun 2015)—Health and climate change: Policy responses to protect public health.

One of the authors of the paper is ILRI veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert Delia Grace, of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH). Another is her colleague Victor Galaz, professor of politics at the Stockholm Resilience Centre

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