Prioritization of appropriate food safety standards.
Animal health appears to be a higher priority than food safety for many national governments, except where consumers have considerable voice. This consultation has concluded that food safety is linked to food security, is beneficial to the poor when it is provided at an appropriate level, and deserves a higher priority on national agendas. International agencies can assist, but national governments ultimately determine their own priorities.
Equalising access to the standards setting process.
Efforts have been made to encourage the poorest countries to attend international meetings and to understand and apply SPS measures. As yet, they have insufficient access to the negotiating process that precedes meetings, and may be inadequately briefed. Contributing factors to participation include:
Setting appropriate standards.
It is necessary to promote standards that are appropriate for the risk management situation and can actually be enforced. Risk management measures to create food safety, including standards, vary with food chains and situations.
International vertical chains depend on SPS standards and agreement between trading partners. National vertical chains have minimum standards set by governments but consumers, private processors and retailers may set additional standards. One example of this is in the Thai milk market, where the highest quality standards are now set by retailers. Condensed milk used to be commonly drunk by the poor, now there is more fresh milk drunk which has a nutritional benefit. Indeed, in the Thai poultry and pig markets, national standards and abattoirs for domestic markets are run under inadequate legislation, although those for exports run under a much higher level of legislation. Competition can drive up standards, e.g. imported cheese in South Africa is setting quality standards that some local producers and processors are trying to match.
In informal markets, standards are agreed between producer and consumer. For own consumption, the producer/consumer decides what standards to apply. At this level, legislation may already be sufficient but disseminating the message is equally important.
Enforcement is greatly influenced by responsibility. This requires both defining the scope of accountability, and promoting the mindset to accept it. Risk communication to developing countries, and within developing countries is an important component of this process.Transparency and information access to producers and consumers need to be improved and this requires capacity building in risk communication.
Access to information
Understanding of the SPS agreement and its implications, and up to date briefing, are essential for national governments to fully participate in OIE and Codex decision making. There is a need to make more effort in helping all member countries of these organizations to access the SPS information system. Information about SPS processes should ideally be distilled and presented according to different needs, e.g. for different commodities, different levels of participation in international trade, and the possible implications of proposed changes. Specific solutions could come from consultation with member countries.
Tools to support decision making
It is important that all governments use standards setting as part of a risk management system, by asking questions like:
Decision support tools are needed to assist policy makers in determining:
A number of tools and guidelines exist, and some have been prepared by FAO, but there is a lack of worked examples and concrete case studies, as well as a confusing plethora of information.
In addition, mandated international organizations should provide their own assessment of the impact of changing standards on the poorest, who are least equipped to do the analysis for themselves. There is a need to assess economic as well as technical risks of changes in markets and standards, including an assessment of externalities (e.g. who will be affected if the market fails through an uncontrolled risk?).
Adequate surveillance of foodborne disease is lacking in the poorest settings, and this surveillance function is critical in evaluating the success of systems. Investment in health infrastructure in poor settings is key to creating this capacity.
Support to small producers and processors to encourage good practice
Good practice guidelines for practitioners are in existence, but not for all commodities and production systems. These need to be updated and more widely disseminated.
Assisting small farmers, traders and processors to enter formal (regulated) or vertically integrated markets will include, (but not be restricted to) helping them to comply with standards. It may involve quite wide ranging changes to management practice.
Involvement of a wide range of players
Greater input of good science into risk assessment, evaluation and communication is needed, (e.g. precautions against BSEs are very hard to justify economically). Universities and other research institutions have an important role to play.
Involvement of the private sector can produce beneficial changes e.g. Nestle’s model for involving smallholders in the dairy value chain in Pakistan and China. This business model requires political stability, a sufficiently large and concentrated consumer population that can afford to purchase processed milk, a sufficient population of livestock producers to provide the necessary volume of produce, and sufficient infrastructure. Where these conditions do not exist, significant private sector involvement is unlikely since the risk will be too high or the returns too low.
Those who cannot participate in the formal market may need to exit from livestock production, or find an additional income source. Policy change must therefore embrace more than agriculture. Additionally, it must be about creating conditions to encourage investment, e.g. education, information, credit.
The ability of farmers to adjust in order to participate in the formal market will be affected by equity, e.g. land holding, which affects the ability to participate in a value chain.
The severity of the effect will depend partly on the speed of change, e.g. in Brazil, major milk companies holding 50% of the formal market in three years excluded approximately 35% of their producers.
The best approach will be country specific and will require empowerment of displaced market chain members so that they are able to adopt alternative livelihood options. For example, before the HPAI outbreak in Thailand, small scale producers used to depend on contract farming. Now there is a possibility that large producers will choose to contain the whole value chain within one business, without contract farming, and small farmers will go out of business. Government is encouraging them to invest in evaporative housing, but this will not be economical for many and some will go out of commercial chicken farming. Empowering would need to include extension on biosecure poultry raising, information and training in other options, as well as credit to start other livelihood activities. African farmers are aware that their children may not have a secure future in farming, leading many to choose education as a safety net, so that their children have a choice of livelihood. In this situation, a very broad based policy process encompassing sectors other than agriculture is needed to mitigate the impact of changes in the livestock sector.
