World Food Safety Day 2024

Over one-third of the world’s food is lost or wasted, undermining efforts to end hunger and malnutrition while contributing 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In low- and middle-income countries, over 40 percent of food loss occurs before a crop even makes it to market, whether due to inadequate storage, pests or microbes, spoilage, spillage in transport or otherwise. Eliminating food loss and waste (FLW) would provide enough food to feed two billion people, as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing FLW is critical to global food security, nutrition and climate change mitigation, with digital technology and the reduction of household food waste playing an important role in these efforts. 

In order to raise awareness, exchange information and share success stories, USAID’s Food Loss and Waste Community of Practice created the USAID Kitchen Sink Food Loss and Waste Podcast. Our goal is to share monthly, bite-sized episodes that highlight the approaches USAID and the U.S. government are taking to address FLW. We hope these episodes provide a valuable resource for those interested in why we should care about FLW and how we can reduce it. 

Each year, USAID joins our partners in celebrating World Food Safety Day on June 7th with a month-long focus on the importance of food safety and the work, resources and tools carried out by our food safety partners. In a world where 735 million people go to bed hungry every night and 420,000 die from unsafe food every year, we simply can’t afford to lose food to contamination and spoilage. In times like these, we need to preserve every ounce of food we grow in a way that delivers on nutrition and helps mitigate climate change. This episode celebrates World Food Safety Day with three USAID activities: Feed the Future Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food (EatSafe), Feed the Future Business Drivers for Food Safety (BD4FS), and the Alliance for Inclusive and Nutritious Food Processing (AINFP). 

You can subscribe to receive the latest episodes of USAID’s Kitchen Sink and listen to our episodes on the platform of your choice: Apple, Spotify, and more! Video recordings of the episodes are available on YouTube. Check in every month for new episodes as global experts discuss a range of issues about FLW and methane emissions - from the critical role of youth to the staggering economic costs - and learn about specific ways that USAID is tackling FLW around the world. 

If you have an idea for an episode topic you’d like to see featured or if you would like to participate in an episode of USAID’s Kitchen Sink, please reach out to Nika Larian (nlarian@usaid.gov).

Transcript

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[Music] welcome to USAID's kitchen sink a food loss and waste podcast I'm your producer NIka Larian. 30 to 40% of the food that is produced is either lost or wasted contributing to a global food crisis with over 800 million going to bed hungry listen on as USAID experts speak with researchers and development professionals to explore solutions to this critical issue that Demands a kitchen sink approach when it comes to climate food security and food system sustainability we have no time to waste.[Music] Thanks for tuning in to USAID's kitchen sink a food loss and waste podcast my name is Nika Larian senior food safety advisor and producer of the USA kitchen sink today we are celebrating world food safety day which aims to draw attention and Inspire action to help prevent detect and manage food safety risks in honor of this day of awareness and information sharing USAID curates an entire food safety month on Agrilinks so I encourage you to head over to Agrilinks.org to learn more to celebrate I will be speaking with three of USAID's food safety activities evidence and action towards safe nutritious food or eat safe business drivers for food safety or bd4fs and the alliance for inclusive and nutritious food processing or ainfp I am joined today by Richard pluke chief of party for eat safe at gain Roberta Loretta Bernard V Vice President for programs for bd4FS at Food Enterprise Solutions and Angela Mulaisho chief of party for anifp at technoserve as these three USAID food safety activities come to a close this year we will reflect on Lessons Learned particularly in the intersection between food safety and food loss and waste thank you all of you for joining me today I'm going to hand it over to each of you to give a a brief background and introduction to each of your activities starting with Angela so over to you thanks Nika I'm greatly honored to speak about how food processing can reduce food loss and waste and as nika has mentioned I'm the chief of party for the alliance for inclusive and nutritious food processing this is a regional program in Partnership between usaid technos serve and partners in Food Solutions which aims to create a more competitive food processing sector to improve availability of safe nutritious and affordable food food products to the local consumer the program provides technical assistance to food processes in five countries namely Ethiopia Kenya Malawi Tanzania and Zambia to address specific manufacturing and business challenges that limit their growth The Alliance program also partners with ISF advisors which works with financial institutions and other actors to help processors access the financing they need to grow we've been implementing this program since 2018 and have provided customized technical support to 240 food processing companies that have generated over 400,000 metric tons in sales of nutritious foods and we have delivered food safety training to about 3,000 participants thanks thank you Angela for that introduction and important context on the work that aInfp is doing over to Roberta thank you nika and thank you for allowing me to talk to you all today um my name is Roberta lorti burnhard I'm the dcop for um the feed the future business drivers for food safety project I'm also the vice president for programs at Food Enterprise Solutions or FES the aim is to strengthen the capacities of the key actors within Food Systems and their agents to make them agents of positive change in the effort to reduce the risk of food contamination and mitigate pre-consumer food loss and strengthen an overall strength in the food system BD4FS is also a multicountry effort aimed at acceleration adoption of food safety practices and local food systems in Senegal Nepal and Ethiopia the goal of be for FS is to improve growing food businesses capacities to provide consumers access to safer and nutritious Foods by increasing the adoption of Food safety practices and food loss protocols food safety is increasingly driven by informed consumers and we work with growing food businesses to strengthen this capacity our capacity building efforts include all levels of businesses along production to consumption corridors to improve the adoption of food safety and food and reduce food loss we work in close collaboration with in country experts and where we co-design relevant Innovative and sustainable approaches for delivering food safety training validation and technical assistance some of the services that we provide are of course food safety training through an online and in-person venues um we do food safety awareness through our created our BD4FS created M Safe Foods mobile messaging app we of course build capacities for young women and uh entrepreneurs uh we provide expertise in cold chain supply Logistics and we help to connect growing food businesses with the established network of on the ground Partners we also do a very intensive uh Financial mapping of services that could be provided to Growing food businesses in the time frame of BD4FS which started in 2019 and goes appr as nika said to the end of this fiscal year 2024 um we've had some notable impacts despite the almost two years of activity disruption by covid some of the key things that we've accomplished is we've trained over 20,000 growing Food business owners and operators we've done 469 in Virtual and in-person trainings and women entrepreneurs represented 69% of these trainees youth represented another 34% we of course um supplied food safety knowledge and adoption and 93.5% of the participating growing food businesses have recalled these key messages and 10,000 of them have of these individuals applied the improved management practices or Technologies we've completed 37 food safety validation Audits and awarded to 24 growing food businesses the bd4fs food safety validation badge and I'll talk more about that later across all the participating businesses they increased their sales on an average by 12% um directly correlated to our um to business driver for food safeties trainings we enabled four growing food businesses to secure almost $6 million in private investment through our BD4FS Capital mobilization program we've also produced and disseminated um over 38 Publications on food safety and food loss and we have an SME food loss protocol tool and we've created around 11 videos on the subject matter thank you thanks Roberta and lastly we'll hand it over to Richard hi Nika hi Roberta and Angela uh thanks very much for in inviting me uh onto the podcast um it's always been an ambition since you started um so I'll quickly um introduce myself I'm Richard pluke uh chief of party and food safety lead uh at gain um and I manage the eat safe project uh which like the other two started um around 2019 um so the project is implemented by a Consortium led by gain Global Alliance for improved nutrition uh the Consortium also includes ILRI Busara Behavioral Science and Pierce Mill Media company uh the project has operated largely in Northwest Nigeria and Central uh Ethiopia although during Covid we had a special activity which had us working in in five different countries um and the focus of our project is on food safety and traditional markets you and absolutely key space and food systems in low and middle- inome countries uh there are various measures on how important it is but I think sort of we can say you know 70% and above of people do get their food and especially fresh fruits and vegetables Meats uh from there so they are hugely important but they also come with significant food safety risks um so the task of our project has been to generate uh evidence and guidance on how to change behaviors around food uh food safety and markets um and to be honest with you changing behaviors is something that's been traditionally neglected when it has come to improving food safety in traditional markets which is why both usaid and and Gain felt that it would have it was an important topic uh to spend the last five years on um so we are focusing on Market actors but in particular consumers which again have been left out of a lot of previous uh previous efforts um so yeah we found out lots of important things that we are sure will find their way into future uh programming around food safety in traditional markets and perhaps in some other in informal markets spaces I think I'll leave it there thank you thanks Richard and and thanks to each of you for those introductions um as we said we're celebrating world food safety day this is a food loss and waste podcast but as as everyone on this call has probably said themselves safe food is saved food and food loss and waste and food safety are very intimately linked so let's take some time now to dive a little deeper into to each of the the different activities and the work that they're doing so Richard I'll start with you can you share how improving food safety in traditional markets can reduce food waste certainly um thanks uh yeah so um I I guess the first thing I'll say uh just in case I forget it is that we have a lot of information on agrilinks around this uh and we actually do have a Blog on uh food waste uh and and food safety in traditional markets so perhaps if people want to sort of read uh about the work we've done in that space uh there's actually two blogs now that I come to think of it um so please please go there uh yeah in preparing for this I was sort of thinking about what was sort of what was sort of important and what struck me and it was the perception of safe food also being fresh food or maybe the other way around fresh food and quality food was safe food and that is not actually the case uh sometimes but it but we did recognize it as an important entry point and sort of a lever to get people talking and thinking about food safety and and and starting to act on it um and if you if you do accept that then you I think quality fresh food also relates to lowered uh food waste um and that you know for that very reason if you are working on improving food safety uh you you're also going to be improving on having fresher higher quality food that is less likely uh to to be wasted um and then in terms of this specifics uh if you as we have are working in the market uh to have uh Market actors change their knowledge attitudes and practices around food safety it doesn't take much to see how changes in those would also uh benefit uh reducing food waste uh and you know I'll start at kind of better engagement with suppliers uh I know food waste is sort of more about uh vendors and consumers but you know looking a little bit up the um uh the the value chain um suppliers if if you have bought in as a vendor to kind of getting safe produce you know that that means produce that is not damaged that has been harvested at the right time that's being transported uh and that there are efficiencies in in that uh Market Channel then you uh as a vendor receive uh safer and higher quality food that is less likely to to to spoil um and then secondly as vendors who are changing behaviors you get uh better handling and care of of that produce um and I think that's you know qu quite uh understandable you know you talk about separating out of damaged Commodities uh damaged Commodities are a point of contamination that can uh kind of uh uh kind of speed up the um the degradation of produce that's actually quite healthy or it would have been if it had not have been mixed with damaged fruit so and then placement and display uh if you sort of have things on top of other things you're obviously bruising and damaging uh produce there um and then sort of infrastructure is is one in in traditional markets which really don't have um great uh generally don't have great infrastructure and if you have better infrastructure you're talking about having better shade which means a reduced temperature which slows down the rate of Decay um and you know also the rate of uh contaminants if if they're biological um on on the produce you decrease the source of contaminants so for example waste management or having access to to water all of these things uh reduce contaminant levels and also help preserve uh Foods um and then you know W with water and better facilities you can do a better job of cleaning your produce you can do a better a better job of preserving your produce uh of storing it uh in hawasa in Ethiopia where we're currently working a lot of uh vendors sort of have to physically take their produce home they pick it up and put it on their back and walk you know I don't know how far and the uh the produce is bumped around and and damaged and so if it can be stored because there's better infrastructure that's obviously better um I think you have to mention cold storage uh but if appropriate for traditional markets uh that obviously um kind of helps helps with um keeping things fresh uh keeping them for longer and also keeping them safer and then sort of kind of coming to an end uh if you are changing behaviors around food safety you're creating uh a culture of food safety and and a culture of care basically and that sort of permeates through the community um due to the role of you know the important role that traditional markets play play in the communities um so you know like what we have found in our work we have had uh a safe food stand in the market and messages coming out of that safe food stand have been very effective in getting out into the community uh and the uh state government have have adopted uh those safe food stands because they do see their importance in getting messages out to to the community so you know if you are changing behaviors in the market and that also includes uh the consumers who visit it that means they are taking sort of changed behaviors changed practices back into the home um and you know so because you know once you realize how important food safety is and you know we have to mention the Ferg report in 2015 and the 600 million people who get sick a year and the 420,000 who die a year once people understand uh the importance of it but the fact that they have agency and can change things they go home and they keep their food safer but because of this link between kind of quality and freshness and safeness it also helps uh with the food waste and um yeah I I was in aroga Market in hawasa last week uh and just um we had a market celebration day and we were talking to a market vendor who who was in our program uh and we were sort of rudely pushed aside as these very large wooden crates of tomatoes would were dumped onto the floor you know they uh they were sort of a couple of feet uh they were they were big but they were completely piled over the top um they were dumped on the floor they they'd come in on a donkey cart on a sort of a really bad Road and then sort of these guys were lifting up the other ones and just dumping them on top and you know it was almost as if they were making tomato puree as they sort of tomato squeezed out the sides of the crates and then two feet to that side was our Vendor who was picking through yesterday's crate which you know had sort of 20 30% uh lost tomatoes and uh you know she was sort of doing her job but just the waste was was obvious and the and the food safety uh risks uh we're also obvious so yeah I mean the these two subjects uh are you know critical and we you know I'm happy that we we get to talk about it on this world food safety day thanks thanks Richard for sharing the uh importance of of infrastructure as well as the role of of vendors in improving food safety handling and practices to reduce food loss and waste so kind of to maybe let's expand a little bit on that role of consumer the dynamic between consumer and vendor and hand it over to Roberta to talk about the role of the private sector and reducing food loss and waste great thank you nika um so BD4FS um targets small to medium growing food businesses and this segment of the private sector plays a really critical role in providing safer nutritious foods for local populations and an active role in reducing food loss you know between suppliers and food retail now SMEs as a group have a significant cumulative social and environmental impact and they form the backbone of national economies and the global Supply chains of large of some large companies individually SMEs have relatively small environmental and social impact but as a group uh the impacts are much larger um as SMEs comprise a major share of total private sector food entities in both developed and developing countries all food companies evenes have internal checks and balances built into their business plans to ensure that food is not lost at the warehouse door of course SMEs are a little bit more um challenged with this um the most crucial of these is a quality management control system of course along with good manufacturing practices um these are professional industry structures put in place to ensure that raw material coming into the plant is handled hygienically stored at the right temperature and process based on local requirements as well as International standards the bulk of BD4FS’ work um is to ensure that smmes utilize their resources to address not only food safety but also food loss um in in the in our BD4FS Capital mobilization um project we worked with investors to bring in needed resources to expand and upgrade food SMEs technologies that support their Innovations towards reducing food loss the capital mobilization resulted in investors providing almost $6 million dollars an investment towards Technologies like cold chain cold trucks cooling rooms and other technologies that helps reduce um food loss we also created the BD4FS food loss protocol checklist and this checklist is used to collect Baseline data and track changes in practices um and of food losses after the businesses have received the training capacity and capacity building it includes 72 critical data points to measure raw material weight and other things like composition and quality before during and at the end of food transformation the BD4FS food loss and waste protocol has helped SMEs to reduce manufacturing impacts pre- and post manufacturing it's helped them significantly reduce waste and ensure that any unavoidable waste is utilized to the fullest degree for instance you know organic matter used as fertilizer um and it's also helped them conduct their simple in-house audits to see where their resources are being spent and what the correlation is between resources and waste as it relates to the entrepreneurs so that they can put up preventative measures another aspect you know of the private sector of these SMEs and what we've worked on to reduce food loss and waste is we created an SME class of program that provides training and auditing to validate the uptake of their Hazard analysis critical control points in their processing which is haive this program addresses what the SMEs need to do to have a strong quality management control system in place um the ones that we worked with did not already have this in place and they would not have been able to pass a full Hass of certific patient without this preparatory step so our training starts with their suppliers to ensure that their raw product is is being produced for instance with good ag practices you know reducing post Harvest loss um post Harvest loss is nutrition loss so um and of course these are all sector specific Dairy has their own um prerequisites the vegetable segment has theirs meat Etc of the companies that were enrolled in this pre-hastive program 69% of them passed their preas audit and they were validated to to be providing safer Foods now many of these companies are in the process now of getting their first hassive certification another important uh thing to highlight about what the private sector is doing in the in the segments that we worked in is we created um we did a survey on our theory of change to examine the spread effect of the BD4FS program uh training including the food lost and waste protocols now these smmes that we looked at did not directly receive BD4FS training now implementation timelines are varied of course and of course with covid um so with the majority of these protocols they were implemented in the last three years many of the companies um reported that by adopting these food safety practices and the the food loss weights protocols they have been able to increase their company image or their brands um they've been able to reduce risk of contamination and decrease food spoilage so the study suggests that Improving the knowledge and practices among supported companies can spread to companies that are not directly involved and so in in a sense we are creating and supporting and and building a really strong food safety network another thing that we did in this process is we created an msafe food app whereby companies could utilize this app to do a marketing analysis as well as get um specific information about food safety and food loss and waste so to wrap up I just like to mention that BD4FS has recognized the impact that women uh young entrepreneurs have made in reducing food loss and food waste these young entrepreneurs are acutely aware of the discouraging statistics of food lost and waste globally because they're more actively involved in the global media platforms more so than their older counterparts are their older entrepreneur counterparts I'd like to highlight one young entrepreneur in Senegal naatu shop is an engineer and she's also a small business owner uh with a company called sen fruits processing the company process processes a variety of fruits but they process one called datarian which locally is referred to Ditax it's kind of in the same family of Tamarind if for those of you who don't know it but they use it they process it to use in juices pulps and jelly the fruit has a very hard cover and an inedible peel and it's routinely discarded but uh nakatu invented a depulping machine that would utilize not only the pulp but also provide additional nutrients from this peel for other food products as well as the potential to use in in organic matter like for fertilizer so with that I'd like to turn it over to Angela to talk more about how food processing can uh reduce food loss and food waste thanks thank you roberta um I'd like to start off uh by just citing uh some statistics um according to estimates from the food and agriculture organization approxim approximately onethird of all food produced globally is lost which is quite alarming considering the high levels of food insecurity and high levels of malnutrition in most of our developing countries in aiming to support food processes to be more profitable and competitive The Alliance program provides customized technical assistance to food processors who are in the middle of the value chain to improve their efficiencies reduce waste and thereby reduce costs these can also have important impacts for climate may change mitigation by reducing the inorganic and organic use our program has contributed to reduction of food loss and waste through various interventions and these include firstly improving uh packaging good quality packaging improves the shelf life of food and therefore reduces waste in the distribution chain as well as in our households for instance our program has worked with a dairy Processing Company in Kenya to reduce their inorganic material waste by supporting the food processor to adopt reusable plastic trays for yogurts rather than single use versions and recommended that they stop the practice of shrink wrapping their products with polythan other ways we are supporting our clients or food processors is through improving forecasting through the use of better and more accurate forecasting models which allow maximizing the use of ingredients in their processing facilities we're also supporting our clients or food processors to be able to put in place systems to be able to measure waste and efficiently plan production which greatly reduces the amount of waste that is generated we also are supporting the food processes in the five countries to review quality control systems in order to ensure that the quality standards and specifications being applied are appropriate for the product it is also important to make sure that the processes used for quality assurance are operating correctly and as with other areas staff involvement plays a huge role in minimizing waste and this is done through staff awareness and training such as food safety training that is aimed at behavioral change and commitment to food safety and hygiene practices as I had mentioned in my introductory our program has provided customized technical assistance to a honey Processing Company in Kenya for example to document their processing practices in compliance with food safety standards this resulted in this food Processing Company identifying which practices were causing inefficiency and enabled them to reduce their waste from 15% to 5% our program has also been able to support uh food processing companies in improving the disposal of unavoidable waste by ensuring maximizing the usefulness of value an example I'd like to cite is one of our food processes in Ethiopia which we supported and this is one of the largest meat processing companies and we supported them in developing Innovative products utilizing meat byproducts that were previously unused this collaboration lead to the successful formulation of three new byproducts derived from previously wasted Parts additionally a number of our food processors on the programs have been able to convert organic byproducts into biofuel in order to replace place or reduce the use of charcoal or wood for example a dairy Processing Company in Ethiopia installed the country's first biodigestor converting cow waste into energy to power the milk and cheese processing plant this led to enhanced efficiency of the biodigestor ultimately reducing the company's on grid power cost by 80% in addition we also providing support and recommendations to the food processers that we have partnered with in the use of technology to reduce waste during production another area I'd like to highlight in terms of the support we've provided is in the use of sustainable sourcing practices by food processors which reduces food loss that is caused by inefficient growing processing or preservation we we have been able to do this through small ho farmer engagement and support for Quality raw material supply and adherence to food safety standards food processors who are our program beneficiaries have engaged with small holder Farmers to ensure that the raw materials they are supplied with meet the greatest or the highest level of quality and food safety standards this has been attained through training and provision of farm input to Farmers where processors have established new collection centers nearer to Dairy Farmers in the case of the clients that are in the dairy value chain they've uh provided training in best practices for full for good quality raw material supply which has led to better quality and safe to consume raw milk as well as reduced wastage similarly in the Grain and edible oil value chain this support has included food processing companies support to small holder farmers in the provision of farming input such as seed fertilizer stock feed vaccines as well as medications as well as training in climate smart agriculture there's quite a lot of benefits for food processes and in closing I just like to conclude that these benefits such as increased profits by selling additional products or by reducing inefficiencies within their processing line that require purchasing of additional input materials to make the products there's also a great benefit in terms of the decreased cost by using reusable packaging material there's a benefit also in engaging in regenerative practices and improved packaging and also decreased fuel cost through the use of biofuels from byproducts I would like to make a recommendation particularly for future programming to support food processors in understanding their current practices specific and actionable adaptations and solutions can be recommended and to support these food processes in implementing these practices technos has developed a global regenerative practice that addresses processing Waste Management Water Management energy usage and sustainable sourcing practices for food processes with that I thank you for your attention I will pass it on to nika over to you Nika thanks Angela and and thank you all for diving a little deeper into each of your activities I especially appreciate the the call outs for the important role of of women and youth in improving food safety and reducing food loss and waste and um really appreciate the call out that for traditional Market vendors for the private sector for food processors it makes economic sense to improve food safety and reduce food loss and waste and I I want to reflect back on something that Roberta said that I really liked that post Harvest loss is nutrition loss I like that that's it's very impactful and very true because um you know in a world where 800 million people are going to bed hungry every night we really cannot afford to lose food to food loss and waste and poor food safety practices so I I thank you all for the work that that you are doing uh we truly have no time to waste and and the the efforts that bd4fs aInfp and eats safe have been doing to improve food safety are are truly making an impact so I I really thank you all for joining us today to celebrate world food safety day and encourage all of our listeners to head over to agrilinks.org to read more from each of these activities and others who are putting forth uh great content this month so thank you all thank you for tuning in to USAID's kitchen sink this podcast was produced by nika and is organized by the USAID food loss and waste community of practice co-chairs Ahmed kablan and Ann vaughn additional Thanks goes to feed the future the US government's Global Food security initiative and the usaid center for nutrition.[Music]