The Russian Federation and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are jointly organizing an International Conference entitled “Food Safety and Risk Analysis” to be held in Sochi, Russia, 18-19 May 2017. With the two organizers, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Rospotrebnadzor, the Russian Federal Agency for Wellbeing, Consumer Rights and Consumer Protection, the conference will draw an international audience and discuss global and regional food safety challenges. This international meeting will bring together more than 350 delegates representing sectoral governmental agencies, specialized international organizations, the private sector, consumers’ associations and the scientific community. The conference is aimed at exchanging experiences and best practices on assessing multifaceted food safety risks, enhancing multilateral dialogue in the field of improved nutrition, expanding international and interregional sectoral cooperation, and promoting partnerships between different stakeholders.

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Basis for this conference are the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted in September 2015, which sets goals to eradicate hunger, ensure access to safe and nutritious food, end all forms of malnutrition, combat communicable and non-communicable diseases. The achievement of these goals directly depends on ensuring food safety. As confirmed by the Second International FAO/WHO Conference on Nutrition (ICN2), improvements in diet and nutrition quality require relevant normative frameworks and control systems for food safety regulation.

Increasing global Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a major threat to human and animal health. It endangers modern human and veterinary medicine and undermines the safety of our food and environment. Antimicrobials play a critical role in the treatment of diseases of farm animals (aquatic and terrestrial) and plants. Their use is essential to food security, to human well-being, and to animal welfare. However, the misuse of these drugs, associated with the emergence and spread of antimicrobial-resistant micro-organisms, places everyone at risk (FAO, 2016).

Declared goals of the jointly organized conference are 1) strengthening multilateral international cooperation on food safety, 2) improving nutrition on a global and regional level, 3) realizing the provisions of the 2030 Agenda and the ICN2 recommendations, and 4) a Political Declaration of the High-Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly on antimicrobial resistance.

The draft programme includes topics such as:

• Global food safety risks – present, 2020 and beyond;
• Principles and modern approaches in food safety risk assessment;
• Risk Assessment strategies for novel foods and technologies;
• Risk assessment and risk management of microbiological contaminants in foods;
• Risk Assessment Best Practice examples for chemical food contaminants;
• International Risk Assessment Strategies in Practice;
• Antimicrobial resistance (AMR): risk assessment and possible strategies for risk reduction;
• Adulterated foods: food safety risk assessment of the “unknown”;
• Risk communication – strategies and best practice;
• The socio-economics of food safety: “sufficient-nutritious-safe foods for everyone”; and
• Regulatory frameworks and international cooperation in assuring food safety.