Les œufs: mettre leur énergie au service de la lutte contre la faim et la malnutrition
Chers/Chères Amis/es,
Malgré la prévalence croissante de l'obésité et des maladies non transmissibles, la dénutrition demeure un problème redoutable pour nombre des pays les plus pauvres de la planète. En Afrique orientale et australe, en Afrique occidentale et centrale et en Asie du Sud, plus d'un tiers des enfants présente un retard de croissance. En fait, le retard de croissance touchait encore près de 151 millions d'enfants de moins de cinq ans dans le monde en 2017. Pour un grand nombre de ces enfants, ce déficit qui gâchera leur vie entière a commencé dans le ventre de leur mère. La mauvaise qualité des aliments est l'un des principaux facteurs qui contribuent à la faible croissance à la fois dans l'utérus et dans les premières années vulnérables de la vie. Mais quels aliments faudrait-il promouvoir pour faire une différence dans ces données? Et comment faire en sorte que les aliments les plus nutritifs soient accessibles aux populations les plus pauvres du monde?
Le petit œuf semble de plus en plus susceptible d'offrir une solution pratique et efficace à ces problèmes. Les œufs se composent de protéines presque pures, de très haute qualité. Pour les jeunes enfants, ils fournissent également la quasi-totalité de l'Apport Adéquat en vitamine B12 et en choline. En outre, leur teneur en acides gras essentiels peut avoir une importance particulière pendant la grossesse. La quasi-totalité de la population mondiale, à l'exception notable de la ceinture végétarienne de l'Inde, aime les œufs, et ceux-ci peuvent être produits à des prix qui les rendent accessibles aux personnes les plus modestes.
Depuis la publication d'un essai remarqué l'année dernière (Iannotti, 2017), nous savons que la consommation quotidienne d'œufs peut considérablement améliorer la croissance linéaire des jeunes enfants. La revue Maternal and Child Nutrition vient de publier un supplément spécial qui résume une pléthore d'informations supplémentaires sur la valeur des œufs et les possibilités de les rendre accessibles.
Le premier article fait le point sur le rôle des œufs dans le régime alimentaire de la mère et de l'enfant et présente des données actualisées sur la consommation d'œufs (Lutter et al., 2018), tandis que le second résume les résultats de marketing social dans un essai contrôlé aléatoire des œufs au tout début de la période de nutrition complémentaire pour favoriser un degré de conformité élevé, ainsi que la responsabilisation des participants et un changement politique en Equateur (Gallegos-Riofrio et al., 2018).
Les troisième et quatrième articles analysent l’incidence d’une intervention contrôlée visant à favoriser la production avicole sur la diversité alimentaire et l'état nutritionnel des enfants au Ghana (Marquis et al., 2018) et en Zambie (Dumas et al., 2018), tandis que le cinquième article examine les succès et leçons tirées d'un projet sur la production avicole à petite échelle pour augmenter la production et la consommation des œufs domestiques dans quatre contextes africains différents (Nordhagen et Klemn, 2018).
Le sixième article (Bartter et al., 2018) fait état d'une nouvelle approche de l'utilisation des coquilles d'œufs de poule pour améliorer l'apport alimentaire en calcium en Afrique subsaharienne rurale, tandis que le septième article présente des modèles commerciaux pour la production avicole en Afrique orientale et en Inde (Beesathuni et al., 2018).
Le huitième document (Alders et al., 2018) passe en revue les multiples rôles, systèmes, défis et options pour une production avicole durable dans la perspective de la santé planétaire et le supplément se termine par un article sur la façon d'assurer un accès universel aux œufs en recourant à la production à grande échelle de volailles (Morris et al., 2018).
Sur la base de ces dernières études, nous vous invitons à participer à une discussion sur ce thème important. Votre expérience et vos connaissances seront très précieuses pour concrétiser les résultats et sensibiliser les gens au rôle que peuvent jouer les œufs dans la lutte contre la faim et la malnutrition.
- Afin de faciliter l'accès des populations les plus pauvres du monde aux œufs, quel devrait être le juste équilibre entre la production à petite échelle, la production commerciale à grande échelle et le commerce extensif? Si les pays s'orientent de plus en plus vers la production à grande échelle, comment concilier les intérêts d'une meilleure nutrition et les préoccupations relatives aux moyens de subsistance des petits exploitants?
- Quelles sont les différentes façons d'accroître la demande d'œufs, en dehors de la disponibilité accrue et de la réduction des prix? Pouvez-vous donner des exemples d'initiatives réussies?
- Comment pouvons-nous atténuer les éventuels inconvénients de la production d'œufs à grande échelle sur le bien-être animal et les émissions de carbone?
- Que doivent faire les différentes parties prenantes (gouvernements, secteur privé, universités, agences normatives) pour favoriser l'accès aux œufs dans les communautés pauvres?
Nous espérons que vous trouverez cette question intéressante et nous attendons avec impatience de recevoir vos réflexions et commentaires.
Salutations cordiales
Saul Morris
Tim Lambert
Thèmes
- Afficher 45 contributions
Where to start...
Those 9 articles do not teach us anything really new...
Not only are they not conclusive on the actual contribution of eggs to nutrition (what can be attributed to eggs vs. what can be attributed to SBCC?), they also show that egg production, unless done in an extensive manner, cannot really lead to cheap egg production, therefore to easy access for the poorest. This is rather convenient when the main partner for this discussion is one of the biggest lobby firm for the egg (and animal exploitation for food) industry.
Unfortunately, there is not much about animal welfare and on the trade off that the production of eggs on an industrial basis would mean for not only the environment but also for health. Let's not forgot the many scandals plegging the egg industry around the world and the number of people getting sick because of the need to produce always more.
Click on the link to the Canada International Egg Commission and check all their members... it is very telling on how eggs production need to make checking and their eggs (babies) a commodity that is fed with antibiotic and kept from seeing the light of day. Is this the model we want for Africa? Is this the model we want at all?
We can agree that egg provide important nutrients, but those can be found in many other non-animal based products that respect animals and the environment (to the exception of the B12 vitamin). So the real question here, knowing that eggs can only be made available to the masses through industrialisation and commoditization of animals, do we really need eggs to fight hunger and malnutrition? Really?
Hallo members,
I considered eggs (and beans) as accessible and affordable protein sources of protein for households, especially in rural areas where chicken are majorly kept in free-range or semi-free range systems.
Small-scale or large-scale really depends on the purpose of producing eggs; for home consumption or for the market. If for the market, then production must make economic sense to the farmer. In Nakuru and Western region of Kenya, the cost of chicken feed remains the biggest hindrance making local eggs unable to compete in the local market. For example, eggs from Uganda sells for as low as KSh 300 (USD 0.3), while eggs by local producers retail at KSh 340 (USD 0.34). The downside is quality. Consumers are not assured of quality bearing in mind the distances the eggs have travelled.
Local initiatives to tackle the feed cost issue include the use of locally available feed like sweet potatoes and cassava; foods that are largely shunned by people in favour of maize, rice and wheat. The tuber crops are planted off season have the primary maize crop has been planted. The available sweet potato varieties are drought tolerant and take shorter time – from 4 months. Even with this, protein sources for chicken feed remain expensive for farmers.
Indigenous and improved indigenous chicken breeds are popular with farmers, especially small-to-medium scale producers because they are hardy (resistant to diseases and can survive on locally available feeds), and they are they are dual purpose; kept for meat and eggs, something that farmers see as an advantage over the exotic breeds.
On increasing demand, finding creative ways to educate people on the nutritional benefits of eggs. I have seen farmers sell eggs to things like soft drinks for their children, which have lesser nutritional benefit compared to the sold egg. Together with this, In addition, increasing options for consume eggs at the home level makes is appropriate. At the moment, most households consume eggs as boiled or fried as a snack, used as a vegetable to accompany. For child nutrition, use with porridge or as an addition with other foods can increase demand and diversity of usage.
Generally, awareness creation and training of producers is the first level intervention to mitigate the downside of large scale production. This is factored into extension and advisory services as part of wider community development communication and outreach. Consumers can also contribute through buying of eggs from farms that treat their birds well. Consumer awareness through mass media tools like radio, television, agricultural shows and exhibitions, and now social media offer possible interactive and participatory channels. However, this can only happen where it is possible to trace the source of the eggs in the market. This can be handled through policy and enforcement at both national and county levels of government.
John Cheburet: Radio Producer, Nakuru, Kenya
Stimulating Egg Demand through Upgraded Household-level Food and Nutrition Knowledge, Kano State Nigeria
Hello forum members,
Eggs are high potential food for improving maternal and child nutrition; that is if you know what it is, what it can do for you in terms of body nutrition and how to go about exploiting the egg potential. We are talking about egg and generally food knowledge and information something that is lacking among vulnerable household women who are mostly responsible for managing maternal and child nutrition at the household level in our part of the world.
One of the feasible options to increase egg demand particularly among grassroots communities in northern Nigeria; Sub Sahara West Africa is to intensify vocational training of household women on food commodities and nutrition. By tradition these category of women are shouldered with responsibility of feeding the family despite the fact that majority of them have little or none food and nutrition knowledge such that is required to make tangible impact. They don’t take good nutritional care of themselves, the babies, school children, adolescents and the aged in the family. There is a situation where head of the household is a poultry farmer producing eggs for sale only and not a bit of the egg is consumed in the household as it is mythically considered luxury that is meant only for the rich. Another sad story is of a rural-based pastoralist community that practice free-range poultry farming producing meat and egg with organic potential but they don’t consume the chickens and eggs, only to sell them while their pregnant women and underage children clearly move around with severe symptoms of chronic malnutrition. Both cases are clear testimony of food and nutrition illiteracy among grassroots communities which could be successfully tackled through learning by training. Training household women on how to differentiate egg recipes and diversify egg utilization especially for maternal and child nutrition holds significant promises for checking diet-related health conditions as well as improve business for upstream actors in the egg value chain.
Stakeholder involvement
Stakeholders such as GAIN et al. need to have direct connection with grassroots community effort in problem areas such as Kano state in Nigeria in order to provide constant guide that will align food and nutrition vocational training with national and international nutrition agenda. For example,
Food and Nutrition Vocational Center (FNVC) in Kano metropolitan is non-governmental not-for-profit adult education outfit that mobilizes household women most of them secondary school terminated and married with children now; train them on food entrepreneurship and organize them into food cooperative to promote community nutrition. Please see attached FEED program.
There are challenges but the success indicators are remarkable. Sustainable intensification of the successes is achievable by collaboration with government and agencies such as GAIN, SUN (scaling up nutrition) in areas of food cooperative management, next level nutrition training and community engagement to address maternal and child nutrition problems on wider scale.
Kindest regards,
Rabiu Auwalu Yakasai
Director
Food and Nutrition Vocational Center (FNVC)
296/3rd Av, FHE Sharada Phase 2
Gwale LGA, Kano State
Nigeria.
I recently attended a World Bank seminar/webinar on nutrition which was largely promoting the need for an egg a day to prevent stunting in infants and toddlers. I academic side was well done, but was it practical? I doubt it. Most smallholder farmers and other deeply entrenched in poverty are unable to afford or produce. Please visit the webpage: http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/integration-an-under-appreciated-component-of-technology-transfer/ where the example is used in a synthesized hypothetical case based on hard data from Angola, and also try working your way through the exercise on Hard Choice: Compromises in quality Nutrition and see if you can include the egg or sell the egg to acquire more energy to meet the dietary needs of you economic opportunity most likely based on heavy manual labor. The link to Hard Choices is: http://smallholderagriculture.agsci.colostate.edu/1028-2/
Thank you,
Dick Tinsley
Dear Colleagues,
I agree with you that eggs are very important sources of amino acids, energy and also some essential trace elements and vitamins.
Recently, we finished some dose : response studies with various Iodine supply in laying hens and found interesting results, which may be also very helpful to contribute to overcome Iodine-deficiency in many countries.
Attached, you will find a review of these studies. E.g. Table 7 demonstrates that one egg of hens fed with adequate I-supply may cover about 50% of the human Iodine-requirements.
Best regards
Gerhard Flachowsky
Prof. Dr. G. Flachowsky
Senior Visiting Scientist
Institute of Animal Nutrition
Federal Research Institute of Animal Health
Bundesallee 37
38116 Braunschweig
Germany
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