High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition launches sustainable livestock development report

ILRI news

A High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) is the science-policy interface of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), which is, at the global level, the foremost inclusive and evidence-based international and intergovernmental platform for food security and nutrition.

HLPE reports serve as a common, comprehensive, evidence-based starting point for intergovernmental and international multistakeholder policy debates in CFS. The HLPE draws its studies based on existing research and knowledge and organizes a scientific dialogue, built upon the diversity of disciplines, backgrounds, knowledge systems, diversity of its Steering Committee and Project Teams, and upon open electronic consultations.

HLPE reports are widely used as reference documents within and beyond CFS and the UN system, by the scientific community as well as by political decision-makers and stakeholders, at international, regional and national levels.

In October 2014, the CFS requested the HLPE to prepare a…

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Is the empowerment of women livestock keepers the key to improved nutrition? A new study seeks to find out

ILRI policies, instititions and livelihoods program

A woman milking a cow in Tanga, Tanzania (photo credit: ILRI/Paul Karaimu)

Written by Alessandra Galie
One of the main goals of gender research in the CGIAR research program on Livestock and Fish is improved nutrition. This is also one of the 4 pillars of the program’s gender strategy and one of the 3 system level outcomes of the CGIAR. Good nutrition in the first 1000 days of a child’s life and for lactating mothers is particularly important for the child’s cerebral and physical development. Good nutrition is therefore considered the basis to improve livelihoods and general well-being. Because higher levels of gender inequality are associated with higher levels of both acute and chronic under nutrition (FAO 2012), gender research in research program focuses on enhancing the empowerment of women livestock keepers and consumers.

Animal source foods (ASF) have been shown to offer enormous potential for nutrition in developing countries…

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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.

 

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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New journal article presents case studies on CGIAR research on aflatoxins

Working in the maize field in Malawi (photo credit: ILRI/Stevie Mann).

The CGIAR Consortium, made up of 15 research centres, carries out agricultural research to contribute to the global effort to find solutions to the problems of poverty, hunger, food and nutrition insecurity, and environmental degradation.

Although there is still some disconnection between agriculture, health and nutrition, it is recognized that agriculture does indeed have important effects on human health. Aflatoxins, for example, pose significant health risks in tropical and subtropical regions.

Aflatoxins are highly toxic fungal by-products produced by certain strains of Aspergillus flavus in more than 40 susceptible crops including maize and groundnuts. Aflatoxins cause around 90,000 cases of liver cancer each year and are strongly associated with stunting and immune suppression in children. Aflatoxins in contaminated animal feed not only result in reduced animal productivity, but the toxins can end up in products like milk, meat and eggs, thus presenting a health risk to humans.

A new research paper published in the journal Food Security (20 May 2015) discusses how agricultural research by CGIAR can reduce the health risks from aflatoxin exposure for poor consumers while increasing the opportunities for poor farmers.

The paper, International agricultural research to reduce food risks: case studies on aflatoxins, begins with an overview of the evolution of CGIAR research on food safety and aflatoxins.

It then presents case studies to show how risk-based and market-based approaches as well as crop genetic improvement and biological control can help provide justification for and add value to future CGIAR research on aflatoxins.

In conclusion, the authors present five priority research activities:

1. Generating evidence on the human and animal health impacts of aflatoxins
2. Understanding the potential of improved technologies and good agricultural practices to reduce aflatoxin exposure in farm households and communities
3. Assessing the costs and benefits of proposed strategies on aflatoxin reduction as well as other goals such as income and food security
4. Assessing how costs and benefits are distributed across men and women in households and across different types of households in communities
5. Understanding factors that facilitate and constrain adoption of aflatoxin control strategies would also be assessed, with particular emphasis on gender issues, incentives and on the role of health information and communication.

The paper was written by scientists from the following CGIAR centres: the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).

Citation
Grace D, Mahuku G, Hoffmann V, Atherstone C, Upadhyaya HD and Bandyopadhyay R. 2015. International agricultural research to reduce food risks: case studies on aflatoxins. Food Security 7(3): 569-582.

 

One size does not fit all: Different food safety solutions needed for different contexts

Rinsing fresh fish in Accra, Ghana. Food safety systems need to be tailored to fit the contexts of different countries (photo credit: ILRI/Kennedy Bomfeh).

 

Every year, The Chicago Council convenes the Global Food Security Symposium to discuss the progress of the United States government and the international community on addressing global food and nutrition security. This year’s symposium, scheduled for 16 April in Washington DC, will address food systems for improved health.

In the 10-week period leading up the 2015 Global Food Security Symposium, the Chicago Council ran an online campaign, Healthy Food for a Healthy World, with one blog post being published each week to create awareness on the role of agriculture in improving global health and nutrition.

John McDermott, director of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health, and Delia Grace, leader of the Food Safety and Zoonoses program of the International Livestock Research Institute, contributed to the awareness campaign through a guest commentary titled Healthy Foods Must Be Nutritious, Safe and Fair.

In their commentary, they argue that to provide nutritious, safe and fair food to all, food safety systems must be tailored for different national and sub-national contexts.

“In an increasingly globalized world, there are dramatic differences in food systems. Policymakers and the public often assume that one universal system should apply everywhere. But what is good for the rich may be bad for the poor and vice versa.”

They also put forward three key lessons for adapting food safety systems, namely, aligning incentives with policy objectives, adopting risk-based approaches to food safety and developing capacity in food safety governance and practice.

To take part in the online discussions, follow @GlobalAgDev on Twitter, join the discussions using #GlobalAg or tune in to the live stream of the event on 16 April.

 

Why gender matters for food safety

The following is an excerpted version of a blog post originally published on the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) website.

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Some of the foods that would most enhance nutrition in diets in the developing world are also the riskiest in terms of food safety. Numerous health risks exist along the value chain for livestock and fish products, from production to consumption. In this post, Sophie Theis (Research Analyst, Poverty, Health, Nutrition Division, International Food Policy Research Institute) and Delia Grace (Program Manager, International Livestock Research Institute) relate findings from a recent A4NH/International Livestock Research Institute analysis of 20 livestock and fish value chains in Africa and Asia that reveal how gender differences in value chain participation influence risk exposure.

The results from the participatory risk assessment of these value chains are published in Grace et al. (2010) and a paper analyzing the gendered dimensions of risk is underway by Delia Grace, Sophie Theis, Kristina Roesel, Erastus Kang’ethe and Bassirou Bonfoh.

Selling milk in Ethiopia (photo credit: ILRI).

In rural Mali, a Fulani herder finishes milking a cow and hoists the calabash to his head, the milk sloshing gently in the vessel as he carefully carries the milk to Mariam, the woman he works for. By custom, Mariam has never milked a cow, but once the milk is in her domain, she is in charge of its business and use. Today she decides to keep this calabash for the family, since she has been able to sell milk at a favorable price often in the past week. She sets most aside to naturally sour, which will preserve it in the absence of refrigeration; the fermentation gives a sharp taste that consumers find thirst quenching in the hot season.

In the outskirts of Nairobi, Faith works the udders of her dairy cow. A male relative she has hired to help with the milking approaches with another pail of milk. She accepts it absentmindedly; she is already estimating the prices she will get selling the milk to neighbors and the local milk bar and considering whether she should invest the revenues in hiring another person.

In rural Mali, periurban Kenya, and many other parts of Africa, women play important and varied roles in livestock and fish value chains. The milk that Mariam and Faith helped to produce goes both to their families and to the market; it is also valued as gifts and in Mali as a sacrifice that brings blessing and protection against evil.

The decisions that Mariam and Faith make have bearings on many people’s nutrition: the quantity of milk that they keep for their household, how they apportion milk amongst household members, the use of the income from milk that they sell, and – less often acknowledged, but critical – the extent to which they effectively manage food safety risk, preventing contamination of the milk.

Many of the most nutritious foods, including animal source foods, are amongst the riskiest in terms of pathogen transmission. Meat, milk, fish and eggs provide plenty of nutrients for pathogenic organisms and can also carry infections from animals that harbor them to people. Food-borne disease persists as a major public health problem in Africa and Asia, where the majority of these foods are produced by smallholders, marketed through the informal sector, and sold in wet markets.

Food safety in these products is a major concern, as informal markets are important sources of food for the poor and tend to provide food that is more accessible, affordable, and compatible with local preferences for certain varieties of food and quantities than supermarkets.

Women like Mariam and Faith manage risk as they interact with informal markets by selling and buying food for their households. Informal value chains are complex, shaped by a number of actors. While risk management training interventions tend to focus on the owners of livestock or on actors only in one node of the value chain (e.g. butchers), risk management relies on all the actors along the value chain, from production, aggregation, processing, retail, and consumption. Many of these actors are women, and attention to local norms in the division of labor is critical for targeting food safety assessments and interventions.

Read the complete blog post on the A4NH website

 

BecA-ILRI Hub hosts aflatoxin research platform towards safe food and feed in Africa

Aflatoxin-contaminated groundnut kernels from Mozambique (photo credit: IITA).

Among the many research projects carried out by the Food Safety and Zoonoses program of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) is one that aims to reduce the risk of mycotoxins in the feed-dairy value chain in Kenya so as to improve food safety and safeguard the health of consumers of maize and dairy products.

The project is developing cost-effective and incentive-based mycotoxin control strategies and solutions for use by poor farmers and other actors within the feed-dairy chain.

Mycotoxins are poisonous metabolites produced by various species of moulds. Aflatoxins are cancer-causing mycotoxins produced by the mould Aspergillus flavus.

Aspergillus can grow in a wide range of foods and feed and thrives under favourable growth conditions of high temperature and moisture content.

The main activities of the project are:

• risk assessment of the Kenyan feed-dairy chain to identify the best control options and provide risk managers with information for decision-making
• assessment of the economic costs of aflatoxins in Kenya’s dairy value chain and examination of the cost effectiveness of mitigation strategies
• investigation of technologies and strategies to reduce mycotoxins risk in the feed-dairy chain
• impact assessment of a package of post-harvest strategies for reducing aflatoxins in maize
• dissemination of evidence and building capacity of local researchers and postgraduate students through participation in designing surveys, fieldwork and data analysis

The project also applies participatory methods to develop and test strategies to mitigate the risk of mycotoxins in the feed-dairy chain.

These participatory methods engage farmers in action research on their fields so they can learn and adopt new technologies and disseminate the knowledge to other farmers.

The project is hosted in the aflatoxin research platform of the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) Hub at ILRI’s headquarters in Nairobi. The platform was set up to provide African scientists and their research partners access to state-of-the-art facilities for nutritional and aflatoxin analysis.

The February 2015 issue of the Aflatoxin Partnership Newsletter, published by the Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa, highlights the aflatoxin platform in an article by Jagger Harvey, a senior scientist at the BecA-ILRI Hub.

Since its establishment in 2011, the platform has hosted work of more than 60 researchers from seven African countries, Australia, Europe and North America,” writes Harvey.

“Collectively, the community around the laboratory has made initial assessments of aflatoxin contamination in a number of countries, conducted the first inoculated field trials in the region to identify maize varieties less susceptible to aflatoxin accumulation, developed models estimating aflatoxin risk at harvest and produced a range of other important findings and tools which are beginning to reach end users to help ensure safer food and feed for Africa”.

 

New book presents research findings on food safety in Africa’s traditional meat, milk and fish markets

Animal products – meat, milk, eggs and fish – are vital components of the diets and livelihoods of people across sub-Saharan Africa. However, these nutritious food products are also the most risky. Most food-borne disease is caused by perishable foods: meat, milk, fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables.

Food borne-disease can be serious. In a minority of cases, it can cause epilepsy, paralysis, kidney failure and death. In addition, the global economic burden of food-borne disease is significant. Annually, food-borne disease is estimated to cost US$78 billion in the United States of America, US$14 billion in China and US$3 billion in Nigeria.

Over 80% of the meat, milk, eggs and fish produced in developing countries is sold in traditional or informal markets. These markets are accessible, sell affordable food and provide market access to small-scale farmers. However, informal markets often lack adequate refrigeration, inspection and control of food-borne disease.

For over a decade, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners have been conducting research on food safety in informal markets to support intensifying livestock production by building capacity for better management of the safety of animal food products.

A newly published book launched two weeks ago (27 Jan 2015) at ILRI’s Nairobi headquarters presents a review of food safety in informal markets and 25 case studies of the meat, milk and fish sectors in eight countries in East, West and southern Africa, as part of the Safe Food, Fair Food project.

A key finding from the book is that in low-income countries it is important to distinguish between the potential food-borne hazards (such as harmful bacteria, chemicals and toxins) and the actual risks they are likely to present to consumers.

For example, data from East Africa show that although the raw milk available from street vendors and traditional markets may contain many health hazards, the actual risks to consumers may be negligible due to the common practice of boiling milk before consuming it.

“Food safety policy should be guided by rigorous research to understand the ways food is produced and consumed in different societies so we can devise strategies that are most likely to reduce the risks, particularly to poor consumers,” said Kristina Roesel, coordinator of the Safe Food, Fair Food project.

“Improving food safety in informal markets will require policies that are guided by an understanding of producer and consumer behaviour, local diets and customs, and interventions that can reduce illness without imperilling food security or increasing poverty,” said Delia Grace, program leader for food safety at ILRI.

Download the book, Food Safety and Informal Markets: Animal Products in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Kristina Roesel and Delia Grace.

 

High-profile ILRI conference discusses the future of livestock research for healthy animals and people

The contribution of livestock to human and animal health was among the several topics discussed at a high-profile conference organized by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 6-7 November 2014. The theme of the conference was Livestock-based options for sustainable food and nutritional security, economic well-being and healthy lives.

The conference was the culmination of a series of events organized this year to mark 40 years of livestock research by ILRI and its predecessors, the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases (ILRAD) and the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA).

Discussions under the sub-theme of ‘livestock and healthy lives’ began on the morning of the first day of the conference with a featured talk by Lorne Babiuk, vice president for research at the University of Alberta on how healthy animals can improve the health, welfare and economy of people.

Lorne Babiuk presents a featured talk titled Healthy animals equals healthy, productive people at the ILRI@40 conference held on 6-7 November 2014 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (photo credit: ILRI/Apollo Habtamu).

In his presentation, Babiuk noted that smallholder farmers dominate livestock production in many developing countries and globally, one billion poor people depend on livestock for their livelihoods.

However, despite the potential of smallholder livestock production to contribute to meeting the growing demand for animal protein in the developing world, the livestock sector is beset by several challenges such as emerging diseases and limited natural resources for raising livestock.

Zoonotic diseases, in particular, have impacts on international trade, food prices and human health.

Babiuk then discussed three biotechnology options that can be used to improve livestock production: vaccines, breeding and selection of disease-resistant animals, and marker-assisted management to produce better quality carcasses.

“Vaccination, in my opinion, has been one of the most cost-effective approaches for the management of infectious diseases,” he said.

“In fact, it’s been stated that vaccination has saved more lives than all other therapeutic interventions in the world.”

He also gave examples of how genetics can be used to improve productivity through classical breeding and selection and use of genomic tools.

Babiuk summed up his presentation by stating that increasing food security will become more critical as the world population increases and that “healthy animals equals healthy people equals healthy environment equals stable economic environments”.

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Continuing with the underlying theme of Babiuk’s talk, a roundtable discussion was held in the afternoon to examine the relationship between livestock, nutrition and health.

John McDermott, director of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health, moderated the discussion. The panellists were Walter Masiga, the World Organisation for Animal Health sub-regional representative for eastern Africa; Juliana Rwelamira, managing director of Sasakawa Africa Association and Vish Nene, director of ILRI’s livestock vaccines initiative.

Left to Right: Vish Nene (ILRI), Juliana Rwelamira (Sasakawa Africa Association) and Walter Masiga (World Organisation for Animal Health) take part in a roundtable discussion on livestock and healthy lives at the ILRI@40 Addis Ababa conference (photo credit: ILRI/Apollo Habtamu).

McDermott began with an overview of the controversial and somewhat counterintuitive role of livestock in nutrition.

He noted that while animal-source foods are important sources of nutrition for poor people in low-income countries, there is underconsumption of livestock products by the poor on account of the high price of meat, milk and eggs relative to that of cereals.

On the other hand, overconsumption of livestock products in high-and middle-income countries has led to an increase in cases of obesity and related non-communicable diseases, a trend that is starting to emerge in low-income countries as well.

McDermott also noted that while meat, milk and eggs are good sources of vital nutrients, there are considerable health risks associated with livestock and livestock products.

“The most nutritious foods are also the most risky. You’re not going to get very sick eating rice as compared to eating spoiled milk or meat,” he said.

Intensification of agriculture to increase the supply of livestock is also associated with environmental contamination and increase of microbial populations, he added, noting that three-quarters of emerging diseases are zoonotic.

The roundtable discussion sought to link the economic development agenda of the livestock sector with issues related to health and nutrition.

Among the topics discussed were the One Health approach for more effective control of emerging diseases; vaccines and diagnostics; value chain development to reduce postharvest food losses and improve food safety and nutritional quality; risk-based approaches to food safety in informal markets and strengthening of national control systems to prevent misuse of antibiotics in treatment of animals.

The outcomes of the discussions on livestock and health on the first day of the conference fed into a parallel session on the second day. The aim of the session was to look into the future to identify the key priority areas for research on livestock and health in the next 40 years.

About 20 participants, mostly veterinary practitioners, took part in the parallel session on livestock and healthy lives which began with three scene-setting PowerPoint presentations and one poster presentation by scientists from ILRI’s Food Safety and Zoonoses program:

• One Health and Ecohealth: A framework for agriculture and health research and intervention by Hung Nguyen-Viet
• Livestock for healthy lives by Delia Grace
• Trends in global health and food safety by Barbara Szonyi
• Livestock and healthy lives by Barbara Szonyi

Following the presentations, the participants split into three groups for an in-depth discussion of the identified priority areas for research on livestock and health in the next 40 years. The discussions were based on their individual experiences, the content of the three presentations and current global trends in animal and human health.

They identified the following three priority areas for research on livestock and health:

• emerging infectious diseases;
• vaccines and diagnostics; and
• antimicrobial residues and resistance.

Research on emerging infectious diseases needs to focus on increased understanding of the drivers of disease, for example, agricultural intensification, climate change, new farming systems, irrigation and increased mobility of animals and people. Research activities could include mapping, modelling and analysis of vectors; vector control through the use of ‘green’ insecticides; biological control of vectors and adoption of the Ecohealth approach to disease prevention and control.

Research on vaccines should be aimed at developing safe, single-dose, affordable ‘combination’ vaccines that are easy to deliver and target multiple pathogens. Rapid diagnostics that can be used along the food chain and are linked into large databases for surveillance can provide early warning systems for quick detection and reporting of potential health hazards and timely intervention.

Research on antibiotic residues and resistance needs to ensure prudent use of antimicrobials for treatment of farm animals to avoid residues in animal-source food products. The transfer of antibiotic resistance from animals to milk, meat and eggs was also identified as an important research area.

Dieter Schillinger leads a group discussion on antimicrobial residues and resistance as a priority area for research on livestock and healthy lives (photo credit: ILRI/Apollo Habtamu).

The group summed up the vision of ILRI’s livestock-for-health research in the next 40 years as follows:

‘ILRI research has contributed to appropriate health management systems leading to healthy animals, people and ecosystems and increase animal-source food and income for all’.