Food Safety and Informal Markets

Animal Products in Sub-Saharan Africa

Kristina Roesel, Delia Grace, Kristina Roesel, Delia Grace

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138818736
• eBook ISBN: 9781317593966
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Agribusiness
• Index: Business

Animal products are vital components of the diets and livelihoods of people across sub-Saharan Africa. They are frequently traded in local, unregulated markets and this can pose significant health risks. This volume presents an accessible overview of these issues in the context of food safety, zoonoses and public health, while at the same time maintaining fair and equitable livelihoods for poorer people across the continent.

The book includes a review of the key issues and 25 case studies of the meat, milk, egg and fish food sectors drawn from a wide range of countries in East, West and Southern Africa, as part of the "Safe Food, Fair Food" project. It describes a realistic analysis of food safety risk by developing a methodology of 'participatory food safety risk assessment', involving small-scale producers and consumers in the process of data collection in a data-poor environment often found in developing countries. This approach aims to ensure market access for poor producers, while adopting a realistic and pragmatic strategy for reducing the risk of food-borne diseases for consumers.

1

INTRODUCTION

Delia Grace, Kristina Roesel, Kohei Makita, Bassirou Bonfoh, Erastus Kang’ethe, Lusato Kurwijila, Saskia Hendrickx, Cheryl McCrindle, Kwaku Tano-Debrah, Girma Zewde and Helena Matusse

Background

Why animal-source foods matter

In poor countries, livestock and fish feed billions. In East Africa, for example, livestock provide poor people with one-tenth of their energy and one-quarter of their protein needs. Fish account for more than half of the animal protein intake for the 400 million poorest people in Africa and South Asia. Meat, milk, eggs and fish are important sources of the micro-nutrients and high-quality proteins essential for growth and health. Studies in Egypt, Kenya and Mexico have shown strong associations between eating animal-source food and child growth and cognitive function, as well as better pregnancy outcomes for women and reduced illness for all.

Production and marketing of livestock and fish earns money for farmers, traders and sellers, many of them women. For example, in East Africa, almost half of rural incomes rely to some extent on livestock and fish. India has the largest dairy sector in the world, employing more than 100 million rural farmers. On the other hand, excessive amounts of animal-source food have been linked to heart disease. Animal-source foods are also important sources of biological and chemical hazards that cause sickness and death.

Why informal markets matter

Most of the meat, milk, eggs and fish produced in developing countries are sold in traditional, domestic markets, lacking modern infrastructure and escaping effective food safety regulation and inspection. By ‘informal markets’ we mean:

• markets where many actors are not licensed and do not pay tax (for example, street foods, backyard poultry and pastoralist systems);

• markets where traditional processing, products and retail prices predominate (for example, wet markets, milk hawking systems and artisanal cheese production);

• markets which escape effective health and safety regulation (most domestic food markets in developing countries).

Informal markets: a history of neglect and unbalanced interest

Much attention has been paid to the role of informal markets in maintaining and transmitting diseases but little to their role in supporting livelihoods and nutrition. Undoubtedly, hazards exist in informal milk and meat markets, including pathogens such as diarrhoea-causing Escherichia coli, Salmonella and tapeworm cysts. Severe acute respiratory syndrome came from – and avian influenza is maintained in – the wet markets of Southeast Asia. Concern over informal food has been heightened by the landmark Global Burden of Disease studies, which found that diarrhoea is among the most common causes of sickness and death in poor countries. Most of this is caused by contaminated food and water and as much as half is linked to animal pathogens or animal-source foods.

Food-borne illness and animal disease are of growing concern to consumers and policymakers alike. Consumers respond to scares by stopping or reducing purchases, with knock-on effects on smallholder production and informal market sellers. Policymakers often respond to health risk by favouring industrialization and reducing smallholder access to markets. These changes are often based on fear, not facts. Without evidence of the risk to human health posed by informally marketed foods or the best way to manage risks while retaining benefits, the food eaten in poor countries is neither safe nor fair.

Research on food safety in informal markets

For over a decade, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and partners (Annex 1) have been conducting research on food safety in informal markets to support intensifying livestock production by building capacity for better management of safety of animal-source food products. The ultimate goal is to maximize market access for the poor dependent on livestock and livestock products while minimizing the food-borne disease burden for poor consumers. A pillar of the research is building capacity for food safety in sub-Saharan Africa by adapting the risk-based approaches successfully used for food safety in developed countries and international trade to the domestic informal markets where most livestock products are sold: a methodology we call ‘participatory risk assessment’.

Safe Food, Fair Food: an example of successful research targeting food safety in informal markets

Many of the research activities featured in this book were funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) through the Safe Food, Fair Food project. The first phase of the project ended in 2011 and its main mechanisms were building capacity in risk analysis through postgraduate training linked to proof-of-concept studies, winning over key decision-makers through participation in project activities, raising awareness of stakeholders through workshops and generation and dissemination of research results on food safety in informal markets. Actively linking research with capacity building, proactively engaging with policymakers and use of participatory methods at community level provide mechanisms by which tools and results generated by the research will be used to promote better food safety management in informal markets in sub-Saharan Africa.

The project supported twenty-five graduate and postgraduate students from twelve different countries to conduct proof-of-concept studies on food safety. Among the students who have graduated, more than half are working in government food safety departments, holding positions as associated researchers or teaching at universities. Eight training courses were given, with more than seventy participants from academia and public institutions responsible for food safety.

Situational analyses of food safety in eight countries developed an up-to-date and user-friendly summary of the food safety situation in each country. National workshops were held in all countries, under the auspices of the risk assessment champions supported by the project. At these workshops, the concept of risk assessment for safer food and enhanced smallholder market access was shared with a variety of stakeholders. Preliminary results from the project and their implications for food safety were discussed. For a full list of publications, please see Annex 2: List of publications from the Safe Food, Fair Food project.

In January 2012, CGIAR launched a new research programme on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health. The programme has four components, one of which focuses on food safety in informal markets. Many of the approaches and methods pioneered in the Safe Food, Fair Food project have been incorporated in the major sub-component on food safety.

What we have learnt about food safety in informal markets

Informal markets are highly preferred

Our studies have shown that informal markets are the most important source of meat, milk and eggs for poor people in Africa and Asia and will continue to be so for at least the next decade. Informal markets often sell food at lower prices, but they have other desired attributes including food freshness, food taste, selling livestock products from local breeds, vendors who are trusted and the availability of credit or other services (Chapter 2).

Food safety matters to poor consumers

Our studies show that most consumers (48–97%) in informal markets say they care about food safety. They also show it in purchasing behaviour: for example, 20–40% of consumers switch to alternative meats in the wake of animal disease epidemics. Willingness-to-pay studies indicate that consumers will pay a 5–15% premium for safety-assured products and demand for food safety increases with economic development, rising income, urbanization, increased media coverage and education level (Chapter 2).

The situational analyses found that decision-makers, too, are increasingly concerned about food safety. The analysis identified key problems at different parts of the farm-to-fork value chain. The analysis also prioritized brucellosis, tuberculosis, salmonellosis and toxigenic E. coli infection as the most important food-borne diseases from the perspective of decision-makers and national experts.

Hazards don’t always matter, but risks do

Hazards are all things that can cause harm. Bacteria, viruses, parasites, chemicals and fungal toxins in food all have potential to cause harm: they are hazards. Risk, on the other hand, is the likelihood of that harm to occur, including its consequences for public health and the economy. Our studies from many markets in eight countries show that food sold in the informal sector often contains hazards. Moreover, as value chains become longer and more complex, transport larger, more diversely sourced volumes of food and place larger distances between producers and consumers, so hazards tend to increase. Consumer and market value chain studies confirm the bulk of literature that suggests, in some contexts, a high level of disease in developing countries is associated with food. An assessment in Nigeria found a high risk from beef-borne pathogens and suggested beef-borne disease was costing Nigeria nearly US$1 billion per year.

However, a series of studies in informal milk and meat markets showed that although hazards are always common in informal markets, risk to human health is not inevitably high. Stochastic models based on data from a number of sites in East Africa showed that milk had many hazards but less risk (mainly because of consumer practices such as boiling which are effective at reducing hazards). In other studies, however, there is a clear link between consumption of foods containing hazards and increased illness. The message is that risk to human health cannot be assumed for informal markets: evidence is required (Chapter 4).

Perception is a poor guide for risk managers

Assessment is needed to understand the source of risk. For example, studies beyond the Safe Food, Fair Food project have shown that dairy cattle are the reservoir of cryptosporidiosis, a serious disease in people with HIV and infants. In Nairobi, risk was associated with vegetable consumption and not milk. Similarly in Vietnam, although pork in wet markets had high microbial loads, increased diarrhoea was associated with consumption of vegetables, not meat. Risk assessment allows actions to be targeted to evidence and not misleading perception, that is, directing scarce resources towards control or inspection of the actors, processes or steps in the value chain where most risk is created.

Studies by the Safe Food, Fair Food project in East and southern Africa came to the surprising conclusion that food sold in formal markets, though commonly perceived to be safer, may have lower compliance with standards than informally marketed food. This emphasizes that food safety policy should be based on evidence and not perception, and failure to do this may be prejudicial to the poor who dominate and rely upon informal value chains (Chapter 3).

Situational analyses showed that only a few of the public health problems were regularly tested and that most food in the traditional or informal sector was not inspected. Where some inspection occurred, it did not follow a farm-to-fork pathway approach, that is, inspection happened only at some points and in a sporadic fashion. In some countries, personnel have been trained in food safety and risk assessment procedures but training is more often oriented to developed country situations and not adapted to local needs or contexts. There is a lack of systematic, risk-based surveillance and inspection because of either lack of infrastructure and laboratory facilities or lack of skilled manpower. Another reason may be lack of a comprehensive approach and understanding of how to address these issues under conditions of poor consumer awareness and demand for remedies of such problems.

Draconian food safety policy makes things worse

The existence of a huge food sector that largely escapes regulation, the high level of hazards in food and the massive burden of gastrointestinal illness all suggest that current food safety policy is not working. In our situational analyses of food safety in eight countries, we found that stakeholders often blame insufficient legislation or lack of strict implementation for poor food safety. In recent years there have been several attempts to improve food safety but this ‘command and control’ method is less likely to work. Paradoxically, legislation can increase the level of risk. A study in Kampala, Uganda showed the importance of poor dairy farmers as risk managers and the paradoxical effects of conventional policy. Thirty practices were described which were used spontaneously by farmers that reduced risk. Moreover, farmers who had experienced harassment by authorities or who believed urban farming to be illegal used significantly fewer risk-managing practices.

Values and cultures are more important drivers of food safety than pathogens

A study in West Africa found that the Fulani believed milk was in its nature pure and could not be a source of disease. They boiled the milk they sold to customers but not the milk they drank themselves (Chapter 7).

Traditional food preparation methods can mitigate food-borne diseases

A study in Ethiopia showed the significant role of traditional fermentation in preventing staphylococcal poisoning (reducing the risk by 90%). In West Africa, anthropology studies contributed to understanding of the perception of risks related to milk. For example, if adulterated milk earns more money, women still consider the adulterated milk ‘good’. On the other hand, cattle owners consider that if milk is heated, it is ‘bad’ and has no nutritional value. These findings have led to risk management recommendations.

Risk assessment can be applied in informal markets by using participatory methods

The lack of data is a challenge to understanding risks from animal-source foods. We found that the application of participatory methods in data collection allowed the rapid and inexpensive collection of data to fill gaps in information required for conducting risk assessment. Eight stochastic risk assessments have been conducted partly based on participatory data, showing this method is applicable to developing country food safety problems (Chapter 5).

Value chain mapping gives insight to product flows and dynamics and alerts to emerging problems

Several studies incorporated value chain mapping. This confirmed that the great majority of animal-source foods flow through informal value chains. Furthermore, several studies found value chains are lengthening in order to supply emerging urban and peri-urban markets, resulting in increased risk (Chapter 6).

Gender equity in Safe Food, Fair Food

Food is a gendered commodity and informal food production, processing and marketing are of high importance to women’s livelihoods. Our research used gender-sensitive approaches in conducting research (Chapter 9). Of the twenty-five studies supported, eleven focused on products which are mainly managed by women (poultry, smoked fish, milk in West Africa and processed meat), seven focused on issues mainly managed by men (beef and game) and the remainder on products for which men and women were equally concerned.

Future activities and the way forward

We believe that food safety is a fixable problem. Our studies on milk in East Africa have shown that simple interventions can lead to substantial improvements in food safety. These interventions involved training, simple technologies (such as the use of wide-necked vessels for milk which are easier to clean), social approval, tests for food safety which can be applied by...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Executive Summary
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1 Food safety in sub-Saharan Africa
• Part 2 Twenty-five proof-of-concept studies from sub-Saharan Africa
• Part 3 Annexes
• Index