Consultation Topic: Food Safety, Loss, and Waste
This discussion will focus on research opportunities related to food safety, loss and waste. There is a need to better understand the dietary consequences of loss and waste of nutritious food and the effect of exposure to food safety issues that occur throughout the supply chain. Mitigation strategies for both loss and waste and food safety could take place anywhere along the supply chain, and are particularly needed in informal markets, where many of the nutritionally vulnerable source foods are found.
We encourage you to actively engage by sharing your experience and thoughts on additional areas for research. Your engagement will inform USAID as it shapes its priorities for nutrition and food systems investments into the future.
Click “Add New Comment” below to start or join the conversation. Please consider these questions as they relate to the Feed the Future Innovation Lab literature review (See Event Resources to the right):
- Low food safety throughout the various segments of the food supply chain can lead to malabsorption of nutrients, diarrhea, infectious disease, poor birth outcomes, growth faltering, and in some cases result in mortality. What other evidence needs to be generated to establish a link between food safety and nutrition?
- What do we know about isolated segments of value chain where various forms of contamination is most likely to begin or grow? What gaps in knowledge exist within the segments?
- A significant research gap has been noted around the mitigation of post-harvest loss, particularly of high value/nutrient dense crops. Investment in post-harvest loss reduction could be a quick impact intervention for enhancing food security and thus improving nutrition. How can advancements in technologies help minimize food loss and mitigate the impact that loss and waste is having on the availability of nutritious foods, at the population or household level?
- What short-, medium-, and long-term outcome measures are missing to measure change in agriculture and food systems for nutrition?
- What remains to be done to help guide the development of harmonized measurements for consumer outcomes (food-groups and dietary diversity indicators)? Are there other measurements we should be considering?
This discussion will remain open from November 12-15 2019. Moderated discussions will take place:
- November 14, 10-12 AM EST (UCT 15:00-17:00), Johanna Andrews-Trevino, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lab
- November 14, 10:00 PM-12:00 AM EST (November 15, UCT 3:00-5:00), Ashish Pokharel, Research Manager, Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lab