Food Safety In 2020
9 February 2010 In a roundtable workshop held last week at the Global Food Safety Conference, a panel of experts reviewed the economic, political and technological aspects and consumer perception that will shape the Food Safety Agenda in the year 2020. Reviewing and discussing the results of the 2020 Food Safety survey were Ed Lonergan, president and CEO, JohnsonDiversey; Bob Gravani, professor of food science at Cornell University; John Lamb, senior agribusiness advisor, rural and sustainable development for The World Bank, and Dave Edwards, a founding director of NSF-CMi, an NSF International company. The event was moderated by Serban Teodoresco, president, Preventa and consultant, JohnsonDiversey.
The Survey
The 37-question 2020 Food Safety survey was sent in English to 3,900 people worldwide with a 9% response rate. Responses were split about 50%/50% between senior executives and technical people. Responses came from 53 different countries, with close to 70% of the data coming from developed countries such as Western Europe, Australia and North America.
Ag Impacts
Demographic shifts, such as economic growth patterns, innovation, industry structure, public policy, resource constraints and climate change will influence food security and ag development, says The World Bank’s Lamb. “Last year [in 2008], for the first time in history, the world was more urban than it was rural,” he says. Africa is the only region where the rate of urbanization and the rate of rural development were proceding at equal pace.
“We’re working on trying to get everybody in the world to [earn] above US$2.00 a day. If we can get them to that level we start to have a major impact on poverty reduction and hunger alleviation. If we can get them to $10 a day, they’d become part of the market economy. When they become part of the market economy, they become consumers of what you produce.” At this point, says Lamb, people start to consume more differentiated, value-added products. “They begin to make choices about variety … they move from basic staples towards higher protein items.”
This greater diversity of demand has imnplications for distribution and transportation, opening new markets, and more demand, for many foods. “We’re moving progressively in trying to get the developing world into high-yielding and resistant varieties. We have changes in systems of production,” Lamb explains. With some areas having limited resources in land, water and soil degration, as well as weather issues, “the development community internationally is trying to increase yields per area. Doing multiple cropping. Raise the cropping intensity. That implies changes in system production and in some cases, movement towards ever more mechanized production.”
“There’s a 70-20-10 rule,” Lamb says. “Only 10% of productive land is going to come from continued expansion of the ag frontier; 20% from intensification on the land that’s already being used, and 70% has to come from innovations.”
Top Food Safety Issues
In response to the question “What will be the top three food safety issues in the year 2020?” the No.1 answer was biological risk. No.2 will be the supply chain, followed by contaminates such as pollution, chemical contaminates, etc. The survey respondents were evenly split on whether the incidents would happen on the farm or in food processing. Only 13% of incidents are expected to happen in private homes; retail, 7%; and transportation only 2%.
More than 80% of survey respondents said food safety will be included in talks about sustainability 10 years from now. When asked to rank in importance the top three priorities out of food safety, food prices, health and wellness, the environment, and food security, the belief is that food safety will remain the most important topic 10 years from now. Food security was second, except in countries such as Asia and Africa where accessibility to food is more of an issue. Health and wellness is number three.
Many survey respondents and panel experts said that in 2020, intentional incidences with food safety will have a bigger impact than accidental, or unintentional, incidents. “Safe food will be a major economic and political threat for international security,” says Teodoresco. Fifty percent of the people believe that food fraud will increase in the next 10 years.
The Blame Game
When asked where most food safety problems are likely to occur, manufacturers believe that consumers in food service are a real concern. Retailers, on the other hand, feel that it’s the supply chain. Consumers have significant issues with food safety coming from food manufacturers. Manufacturers themselves — at least 28% in this survey — said most problems are likely to occur at the manufacturing level. Food service is between 10% and 20%.
The problem of contamination doesn’t come from just one place, though. It comes from microbial risks on the farm, from chemical contaminants, and from emerging pathogens. “We’ve got issues with our friendly pathogens,” says Gravani. “Like salmonella, where last year we had issues with the growth in low-moisture foods, like peanut butter, etc.”
According to Gravani, “We need to harmonize standards, audits and auditor competence. And last, but not least, we’ve got to think about those pre-requisite programs and the strengthening of good agricultural practices, good manufacturing practices, as well as HACCP (Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points) … food safety objectives, and other issues related to bioterrorism and a bioterrorism defense plan.”
The slides and a transcript of the presentation are available at http://bit.ly/FoodSafety2020.
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