Integrated farming is a circular approach to agriculture: wastes or by-products from a production system are used as inputs within another production system, while improving land use efficiency and productivity. To ensure integrated farms produce food that is safe to eat and maintain healthy livestock, entry points for food safety issues must identified and addressed.This brief provides an overview of the food safety considerations in integrated farming systems in the transformation to a circular agrifood system. It is one of five briefs accompanying the FAO publication, Food Safety in a Circular Economy.  

Packaging plays an important role in keeping food fresh and safe but generates waste in the form of plastic and other materials. A circular approach to food packaging can reduce packaging waste that is harmful to the environment. There are important food safety considerations for producers and consumers to be aware of, to ensure circular food packaging solutions are safe.This brief provides an overview of the food safety considerations in implementing circular food packaging solutions in the transformation to a circular agrifood system. This technical brief is one of five briefs accompanying the FAO publication, Food safety in a circular economy.

Reducing food waste can have a positive impact on food security, the climate and the overall sustainability of agrifood systems. Since food waste and by-products may contain contaminants, it is essential to incorporate food safety management measures when redistributing or upcycling these materials for other uses, to ensure consumer health.This brief provides an overview of the food safety considerations in repurposing or upcycling food waste and by-products in the transformation to a circular agrifood system. It is one of five briefs accompanying the FAO publication, Food Safety in a Circular Economy.

A circular water economy involves using limited water resources more efficiently. Water recycling and reuse offer many opportunities for agrifood systems and will likely become more important as water stress increases globally. However, potential food safety risks need to be taken into consideration when designing and implementing circular processes for water.This brief provides an overview of the food safety considerations in water recycling and reuse in the transformation to a circular agrifood system. It is one of five briefs accompanying the FAO publication, Food Safety in a Circular Economy.  

Introducing circular processes and policies is one route to agrifood systems transformation, a key accelerator to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. A circular economy represents a major departure from the current linear production system and from many assumptions underlying existing food safety approaches. While circular solutions offer promising sustainability benefits, they also introduce certain food safety concerns, such as the risk of contaminants, antimicrobial resistance and physical hazards. This brief provides an overview of the food safety considerations across four key areas in the transformation to a circular agrifood system – water scarcity, food loss and waste, food packaging waste, and land use efficiency. It is one of five briefs accompanying the FAO publication, Food Safety...

Agrifood systems require sustained growth to maintain food security for the global population, while facing unprecedented pressure from challenges of climate change and resource depletion. In this context, evaluating, holistically planning and transitioning to circularity will be critical to improve sustainability and face those challenges. While circular economy initiatives offer considerable promise in improving sustainability and increasing performance, these benefits are juxtaposed by the increasing evidence that contaminants, physical, microbiological or chemical, can get introduced, persist and potentially lead to unsafe food. Therefore, protecting food safety is key for the success of transitioning our current linear agrifood system to a more sustainable and circular one. This report provides a synthesis of current and emerging evidence of...

New food sources and production systems (NFPS) is a rapidly evolving and innovative sector that covers a range of foods from plant-based food products to products arising from technological innovations such as cell-based food production and precision fermentation.The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) aims to help prepare its Members for the arrival of NFPS products or new foods on the market by providing sufficient information to suitably protect the health of consumers and implement fair practices in trade. Using foresight approaches, FAO has been monitoring this emerging sector and evaluating the opportunities and challenges it brings for agrifood systems, especially in the context of food safety.Based on this work, three focus areas...

This document contains food additive specification monographs, analytical methods, and other information prepared at the ninety-ninth meeting of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), which was held in Geneva from 11 to 20 June 2024. The specification monographs provide information on the identity and purity of food additives used directly in foods or in food production. The three main objectives of these specifications are to identify the food additive that has been subjected to testing for safety, to ensure that the additives are of the quality required for use in food or in processing and to reflect and encourage good manufacturing practice. This publication and other documents produced by JECFA contain information that is useful...

In response to a request from the 52nd Session of the Codex Committee on Food Hygiene (CCFH), the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Meeting on Microbiological Risk Assessment (JEMRA) convened a meeting, with the objective of developing formal full risk assessment models for Listeria monocytogenes in lettuce, cantaloupe, frozen vegetables and ready-to-eat fish.In the light of the available data and the current risk assessment approaches, the expert group aimed to collectively ascertain the stages from primary production to consumption to be represented in the model, including approaches that accommodate the testing of scenarios, interventions and sampling schemes that could reduce the risk of listeriosis.This report describes the output of this expert meeting and the advice herein is useful for both...

This document summarizes proceedings of the FAO Side event at the 47th Session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC47) as a follow-up to the recent FAO publication "Food safety in a circular economy". The aim was to stimulate discussion on the food safety aspects that need to be considered and addressed when implementing circular practices in agrifood production. The webinar was part of the activities under the FAO Food Safety Foresight Programme.