1

What we have learned about disease risks and food safety in the informal

food sector

Project Inception Workshop: Reducing Disease Risk and Improving Food Safety in Smallholder Pig Value Chains in Vietnam

August 14, 2012, Melia Hotel, 44B Ly Thuong Kiet Street, Hanoi

Outline

How we have learned– Participatory risk assessment

What we have learned– Importance, costs & benefits of informal sector

Lessons from what we have learned– More and better evidence

– Risk-based approaches

– Participatory & stakeholder approaches

– Incentive-based solutions 2

Definition: informal sector

Markets where many actors are not licensed and do not pay

tax (e.g. street foods, backyard poultry, pastoralist systems);

Markets where traditional processing, products, and retail

practices predominate (e.g. wet markets, traditional food

processing);

Markets which escape effective health and safety regulation

(most domestic food markets in developing countries).

3

Assessing food safety in informal markets

Risk based approach– Risk pathway– Codex alimentarius framework– Qualitative & quantitative

Mixed methods– Biological sampling– Household/individual questionnaires– Check lists– Participatory appraisals

4

30 studies on food safety in informal markets– 25 PhD and MSc students

10 consumer preference studies8 national food safety situational analyses

5

6

7

8

Outline

How we have learned– Participatory risk assessment

What we have learned– Importance, costs & benefits of informal sector

Lessons from what we have learned– More and better evidence– Risk-based approaches– Participatory & stakeholder approaches– Incentive-based solutions

9

10

Country PercentKenya 86Tanzania 95Uganda 90Rwanda 90Ethiopia 95Malawi 95Zambia 90Source, A. Omore, 2006

Percent milk marketed via informal markets in selected countries in the region

Importance of the informal sector

Vietnam:•80% pork from small-scale farmers (<100 pigs)•97% pork sold in wet marketsChina•96% farms small scale (<50 pigs) supply 48% of pork•80-90% pork sold in wet markets

11

Direct full-time employment created through dairying at the farm level in Kenyan

highlands

Small & medium scale

Large scale

Workers 735,000 105,000

% of total

87% 13%

Benefits of the informal sector

1 billion people < $1.25/day depend on livestock65% of Vietnamese households keep pigs

100 litres milk handled per daygenerates:

- 5.6 jobs making milk sweets in Bangladesh

- 10 jobs selling milk snacks in Ghana

Premium for formal sector

China: super-market meat 10% premium

Kenya – pasteurised milk 25-40% premium

Increasing concern over food safety

In 7 developing countries studied

Many/most concerned over food safety (40 to 97%)

WTP 5-10% premium for safety

Younger, wealthier, town, supermarket-shoppers willing to pay more for safety

Buy 20-40% less during animal health scares

Jabar et al, Lapar et al

13

Manure

Xenobiotics

Chemicals

Pathogens

Aesthetic

Milk

Xenobiotics

Chemicals

Pathogens

Allergens

Zoonoses:

Bacterial

Viral

Parasitic

Prion

Social conflict

Traffic accidents

Injuries

Environmental degradation

Zoonoses and FBD widespread

High levels of hazards

Variable levels of risks and risk factors

4% consumers Vietnam report to GIT illness in

last 2 weeks (no relation pork or meat consumption, strong

relation vegetable consumption)

9% consumers in Nigeria (strong relation meat consumption)

23% consumers in Nagaland (no relation pork, meat or

vegetable consumption, strong relation hygiene)

43% Nigerian butchers (strong relation group, gender, hygienic

practice, eating own products)14

Findings often counter-intuitive

15

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Total bacteria Enterobac Staph Listeria Residues

% U

NACC

EPTA

BLE

Supermarket

Wet market

Village market

v

16

Risk mitigation

Average of 17.25 risk mitigation strategies used

Farmers who believed UA was legal used more strategies

Improvements are feasible, efffective,affordable

Branding & certification of milk vendors in Kenya: led to

improved milk safety & saved economy $33 million

Peer training, branding, innovation for Nigerian butchers led

to 20% more meat samples meeting standards and cost $9

per butcher but resulted in savings $780/per butcher per

year from reduced COI

Providing information on rational drug use to farmers, led

to knowledge increase x 4, practice increase x 2, disease

decrease by 1/2 17

Implications of learningsPredominance of informal sector

High levels of hazards, variable levels of risks,

Highly context specific, risks often counter-intuitive,

Management of risks not currently effective

Small number of actors & practices cause most of the risk

Implies

Need to generate evidence for local context

Need for approaches based on risk

18

19

Risk-based approaches

Evidence based methodology– Transparent, facilitates

communication– Science-based, reproducible,

falsifiable Standard for international trade

– “Health and safety aspects of Codex decisions and recommendations should be based on risk assessment”

Differentiate between hazard and risk Allow risk targeting Allow identification of critical control

points

20

Evidence generation

What hazards are present? What risk do they present to human health? How big a risk do they present? What do they cost?

What other losses can they cause?

Where and how can they be controlled?

How effective is control? How much will it cost? How can actors be motivated to change

their behaviour to adapt control? How can policy and regulation enable this?

Implications of learningsFood safety often resource constrained

In appropriate regulation can lead to paradoxical increase in risk

Most risk management done by value chain actorsManagement of risks not currently effective

Small number of actors & practices cause most of the risk

Implies:

Participatory & stakeholder led Creates ownership

Incentive-based solutions 21

22

Data collection Understanding cultural practices Introducing solutions Generating ownership

Participatory approaches

Incentive based

Visibly fewer animal deaths Branding to increase sales Training & certification to avoid

penalties Organizing to increase social status

Acknowledgements: ACIAR for funding this project BMZ, IE, USAID, DFID, IDRC, ACIAR