Regulating food quality and safety

Promote research and development on food quality and safety by considering the following measures:

• Incentivize through public funding the development and use of emerging technologies for food monitoring such as smart packaging, optical sensors, humidity sensors, time-temperature sensors and bio-sensors.
  • Chromogenic sensors: versatile and generally cheap method for monitoring food packaging.
  • Change of the generic “Best Before” and “Use By” dating to a “dynamic” system using smart technology which offers information about the state of every package in real time.
• Incentivize the development of more broadly applicable food monitoring systems. Many advanced monitoring systems have been designed to specifically prevent the spoilage of high-value foods with tighter perishability windows such as meat and fish, rather than fruits and vegetables.
• According to the World Index for Sustainability and Health (WISH score), issues relating to the processing and preservation of fruit and vegetables are relatively neglected in research and development and therefore could be promoted.

Adopt food safety regulations:

• Regulate and catalogue the chemical substances involved in food production to minimize risks for human consumption (e.g. EU’s REACH programme).
• Regulate the use of agricultural inputs that are harmful to human health, wildlife and ecosystems, such as synthetic pesticides and fertilizers.
• Mandate procedures for the approval, assessment and authorization of food products and other products in the food chain such as food enzymes, feed additives and plant protection products.
• Adopt procedures for risk analysis, including risk assessment, management and communication to examine and manage the potential impact of a hazard that is introduced into the food supply including identifying methods to effectively address food safety issues and to introduce appropriate food control measures.
• Require food businesses to conduct food safety assessments and improve their public transparency, including related to data on food safety assessments, environmental risk assessments and the authorization of new foods.
• Develop a national food control strategy. National food control strategies enable countries to develop an integrated, coherent, effective and dynamic food control system, and to determine priorities which ensure consumer protection and promote the country’s economic development. Such a strategy should provide better coherence in situations where there are several food control agencies involved with no existing national policy or overall coordinating mechanism. In such cases, this strategy helps prevent confusion, duplicative efforts, performance inefficiencies and resource waste. The strategy should be based on multi-sectoral inputs and focus on the need for food security and consumer protection from unsafe, adulterated or misbranded food. At the same time, it should consider national economic interests related to trade imports and exports, food industry advancements and farmers’ and producers’ interests. Strategies should use a risk-based approach to determine priorities for action. Areas for voluntary compliance and mandatory action should be clearly identified, and timeframes determined. The need for human resource development and strengthening of infrastructure such as laboratories should be also considered.

Adopt regulations for food quality:

• Improve food options by improving availability and affordability of healthy and sustainable food options to replace unhealthy, ultra-processed foods high in fats, sugars and salt. For example, zoning laws to encourage healthy food outlets and restrict the number of “fast food” outlets and other stores specializing in ultra-processed, low-nutrition foods.
• Not all processed food is automatically unhealthy. Where consumption of fruit and vegetables is below the recommended levels, sustainable, resource-efficient autonomous processing and preservation methods can promote the consumption of nutritious, safe and long-lasting products.
• Develop food quality labels and certification systems (e.g. EU schemes for indicating geographical origin and quality of products).

Strengthen capacity of producers and consumers:

• Promote the development, commercialization and use of processing methods/technologies that can limit development of foodborne pathogens such as drying, smoking, salting, fermenting, pickling, canning and food irradiation. These methods can preserve the nutritional, aesthetic and taste qualities of food while dramatically extending shelf life and reducing food loss.
• Implement tighter restrictions and/or monitoring of food vendors operating under poor sanitary conditions, such as those often found in “wet markets” and other informal markets.
• Launch initiatives to train informal value chain actors (e.g. street food vendors) on proper food handling practices.
• Improve street food stall operating conditions (e.g. provide clean and protected structures, access to potable water and efficient waste collection/disposal systems).
• Develop and launch public information campaigns to inform households on how to avoid food poisoning and other food safety issues (e.g. through proper handling and cooking practices). In an investigation of more than 20,000 outbreaks, it was found that approximately 40% of foodborne outbreaks occurred in private homes, compared to 22% in public kitchens (e.g. restaurants or cafeterias).

Robust governance measures are critical to ensuring the effective regulation and successful implementation of food quality and safety standards, and can be achieved in the following manner:

• Utilize technology (e.g. cloud computing, Blockchain, GPS, Internet of Things (IoT), Big Data or artificial intelligence) for food safety monitoring and communication.
• Enhance collaborative efforts among academia, industrial actors, governments and beyond, to better integrate monitoring technologies into food supply chains.
• Implement food safety standards and surveillance networks that operate at and between local, national, regional and global levels, and harmonize any relevant regulatory frameworks across these different political jurisdictions.
• To achieve maximum consumer protection, it is essential that safety and quality be built into food products from production through to consumption. This calls for a comprehensive and integrated farm-to-table approach in which the producer, processor, transporter, vendor and consumer all play a vital role in ensuring food safety and quality.
• Strengthen organizational structures for national food control systems.
• Provide sufficient funding for national food control systems.
• Fund studies to investigate the prevalence of heavy metals in agricultural soils; use data to create databases that map soil contamination levels by area to inform land use and agricultural policy to reduce contamination through measures like soil moisture management, amendment application, addition of organic manure, selection of crop varieties with a low uptake of heavy metals and adopting agroecological practices.

Guides to support the effective regulation of food quality and safety can include:

Guides

Regulating food quality and safety also supports the targets of the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KM-GBF), as well as those of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Climate change mitigation benefits

Improving food safety reduces food waste and losses and associated emissions by reducing unsafe foods that would be discarded for health and safety reasons. Improved soil productivity through the promotion of site-appropriate organic inputs for fertilization and pest control can also boost the carbon sequestration capacity of soil and reduce emissions from processes like freshwater eutrophication and soil acidification.

Climate change adaptation benefits

Among the seven key areas of adaptation put forward in the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience, regulating food quality and safety can directly contribute to:

• Target 9a (Water & Sanitation): Strict food safety standards reduce the risk of waterborne diseases and contamination by limiting the release of harmful chemicals, pathogens, and pollutants from food production and processing. Proper handling, storage, and waste management practices, as mandated by regulations, help protect water sources and improve sanitation across the food supply chain. Limiting the use of harmful chemicals in agriculture also reduces water pollution. This can help combat climate-induced water scarcity by promoting access to safe potable water.
• Target 9b & 9d (Food & Agriculture and Ecosystems): Food quality and safety regulations ensure that food products are consistently safe for consumption and free from harmful contaminants. For example, this is by promoting safer alternatives to synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, which depending on the method of application can improve soil health and resilience to climate stressors by supporting nutrient cycling, microbial activities, pest regulation and other functions. This strengthens food security and supports resilient and reliable food systems, while also promoting the overall health and resilience of ecosystems due to lower contamination from agricultural run-offs.
• Target 9c (Health): The primary benefit of food safety regulation is the protection of public health. Regulations minimize the risk of foodborne illnesses, chronic health problems, and outbreaks by ensuring food is free from dangerous toxins, pathogens, and chemical residues. This reduces healthcare burdens, and improves population well-being and resilience to climate-related health impacts.

Biodiversity benefits

Action under this policy option can also help to deliver on multiple targets of the KM-GBF, in particular:

• Target 7 (Reduce Pollution to Levels That Are Not Harmful to Biodiversity): Regulating the use of harmful agricultural inputs, such as synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, and the level of chemicals used overall in food production not only reduces foodborne risks to humans but also relieves pressure on ecosystems and biodiversity.
• Target 10 (Enhance Biodiversity and Sustainability in Agriculture, Aquaculture, Fisheries, and Forestry): Reducing harmful input application, or using organic alternatives, can also promote soil fertility, nutrient cycling and enhance biodiversity. Such interventions effectively reduce pressure on ecosystems, enhancing their health as well as the quality and nutrition of the crops produced.
• Target 17 (Strengthen Biosafety and Distribute the Benefits of Biotechnology): Introducing food safety regulations along the food chain such as standards, risk assessments and other control measures can help to create a safe environment for the handling and use of biotechnology within food production, such as chromogenic biosensors for assessing food safety, as well as help to ensure the sustainable use of biological diversity.

Other sustainable development benefits

Regulating food quality and safety can support the delivery of multiple SDGs. These include:

• SDG 1 (No Poverty): It can directly reduce the burden of foodborne disease (FBD), which is a major cause of ill health among the poor and perpetuates the cycle of poverty, potentially causing life-threatening diseases that lead to long periods of absenteeism, require expensive treatments, and cause premature death.
• SDG 2 (Zero Hunger): Ensuring food safety and quality also involves interventions for preventing food loss and wastage. This can improve food availability and access to safe and nutritious food, thus combating hunger.
• SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-Being): Regulating food quality and safety can reduce the health burden of FBD, which is comparable to that of malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis, and protect the most vulnerable groups, i.e. infants, pregnant women, the elderly, and those with compromised immunity. It can reduce the burden of a variety of diseases, ranging from the mild, like diarrhoea, to the debilitating, such as kidney failure, brain disorders and paralysis.
• SDG 5 (Gender Equality): Women play important roles in traditional food chains, and often derive their livelihoods in agri-food value chains. Gender-sensitive interventions in regulating food safety and quality can play a key role in enhancing women’s economic well-being.
• SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation): Interventions to improve food safety and quality can focus on improving water quality as well, since unclean water increases the risk of food being unsafe. Limiting the use of harmful chemicals in agriculture also reduces water pollution.
• SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities): Regulating food safety and quality in food markets can secure the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people working in urban agriculture and food-related services, including traditional food markets and street food vendors, which make important contributions to culture, tourism, and liveable cities. This is by preventing incidents related to food contamination that threaten livelihoods by causing sudden and significant shifts in purchasing and consumption patterns.

The effectiveness of food quality and safety regulatory interventions and projects relies on their rigorous design and implementation, which can be constrained by various technical and non-technical challenges, including:

• Improved food quality and/or sustainability standards can lead to higher prices for consumers.
• Food monitoring technologies like smart packaging have struggled to penetrate the market due to low levels of marketing, consumer awareness, and consumer trust.
• Smart packaging that provides real-time alerts and product information could nudge consumers towards only purchasing newly displayed items, thereby leading to food waste at the retail level and revenue losses for retailers.

Incorporating the following measures into a well-integrated and systems-oriented approach to food quality and safety regulation can help reduce trade-offs and overcome barriers to effective implementation:

• Enhanced transparency through traceability may help to persuade consumers to pay higher prices for more sustainable products.
• Incentivize the development and use of food monitoring systems using machine-learning and tamper-proof, decentralized blockchain technology.
• Advance the research and development needed to develop more advanced, scalable, versatile and marketable monitoring technologies, such as interactive packaging using nanotechnology to measure product quality quicker and more accurately, or dynamic pricing to enable retailers to sell products that are older but still safe.

The successful regulation of food quality and safety necessitates the use of effective monitoring instruments, clearly defined performance indicators, and integrated evaluation frameworks, including those used to measure progress and biodiversity and climate-related outcomes.

Indicators to monitor biodiversity outcomes

The Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity agreed to a comprehensive set of headline, component, and complementary indicators for tracking progress toward the targets of the KM-GBF. Some of these indicators could also be functional for monitoring the implementation of this policy option. These indicators are:

Tools to monitor biodiversity outcomes

Not identified

Tools to monitor climate outcomes

Not identified

The cost of implementation varies by country, region and local context.

• Available monitoring technologies generally have high manufacturing costs. According to recent estimates, advanced sensors and active materials can add 20–150% to base packaging costs, though scale is rapidly reducing price.

Key examples of food quality and safety regulation in practice include:

• In 2009, a group-based, participatory training to improve food safety among meat processors and retailers was implemented in Bodija Market, Ibadan, Nigeria. The training included a workshop for representatives of butchers’ associations, who were tasked with passing on the information to their respective networks. The workshop led to significant improvements in food safety knowledge, attitudes and practices, including in understanding the sources of contamination and methods to prevent foodborne disease. The microbiological quality of meat sold after the workshop improved significantly from the levels prior to the training. The total cost of the workshop was USD 4,414, with costs going to materials, advertising and logistical details. With an estimate of 500 butchers reached, the cost per butcher was roughly USD 9.
• In East Africa, the Fruits and Vegetables for All Seasons (FruVaSe) project has improved the nutrition and economic empowerment of women. Over the course of three years in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, the initiative developed capacity for sustainable processing of nutritious surplus fruits and vegetables and their by-products. The project improved shelf life, food safety and food security, and the supply of nutritious, affordable products regardless of seasonality. It also investigated novel processing techniques, consumption patterns, and the marketing of preserved foods.

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