Food Safety Working Group

Details

Food that nourishes, can also make us sick and kill us. In recent years, food safety has been moving rapidly up the development agenda: the result of increasing evidence on its huge and under-estimated impact but also increasing concern over food safety as populations urbanise and feel less in control of the safety of their food. There are excellent epidemiological metrics to measure the health burdens of foodborne disease but there are many consequences of foodborne disease that escape these metrics, especially in low and middle-income countries.

This Working Group will survey the metrics currently used for measures relevant to food safety and foodborne disease, with the aim of developing a technical brief that raise issues and inform research.

I. Scope

The Group will focus its work on the development, synthesis and sharing of innovative research methods and approaches to food safety.

I.1. Aim      

To advance knowledge and scientific understanding among the global research community of methods and metrics relating to food safety.

I.2 Objectives

  • To review the metrics, tools, definitions and software platforms currently used in food safety research.
  • To produce a summary of current gaps and challenges related to these metrics.
  • To suggest additional metrics and new/refinements to existing methods that would help make research in the area of food safety more robust and/or replicable
  • To identify needs and opportunities for extending research on food safety in low and middle income countries

Group Coordinator:

  • Delia Grace, International Livestock Research Institute

Writing Group:

  • Silvia Alonso, International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya
  • Paula Dominguez-Salas, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, and International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya
  • Anna Fahrion, World Health Organisation, Switzerland
  • Barbara Haesler, Royal Veterinary College, UK
  • Martin Heilmann, Food and Agricultural Organisation, Italy
  • Vivian Hoffmann, International Food Policy Research Institute, USA
  • Erastus Kang’ethe, University of Nairobi, Kenya
  • Kristina Roesel, International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya

Advisory Committee:

  • Hoang Van Minh, Hanoi School of Public Health, Vietnam
  • Bassirou Bonfoh, Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques, Ivory Coast
  • Anne McKensie, Harvest Plus, Washington, USA
  • Mohammad Aminul Islam, ICDDR, Bangladesh
  • Jean Kamanzi, Food and Agricultural Organisation, Italy

See some of their ANH Academy member profiles below:

Coordinators
Group Members
Royal Veterinary College and Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health
Food safety metrics relevant to low- and middle-income countries: Technical Brief
FSWG Working  paper
Food safety metrics relevant to low- and middle-income countries: Working Paper