Growth of local food systems: a review of potential food safety implications.

Abstract

A major challenge for livestock farming systems (LFSs) is to reconcile production with the management of natural resources, especially biodiversity and ecosystem services. Based on a review of research conducted on grassland-and rangeland-based LFSs, this paper addresses this challenge by analysing biodiversity as a product of and a key resource for LFSs. Although most studies reveal antagonisms between biodiversity and production, our findings show that it is possible to move towards synergies. The literature review sheds light on five points: (i) moving beyond an antagonistic view of biodiversity and production by considering biodiversity as a resource requires new criteria for biodiversity categorization from a taxonomic view to a functional one; (ii) functional biodiversity (both domestic and wild) considered as a resource provides beneficial properties (e.g. stability and resilience) to LFSs; (iii) links between production and biodiversity cannot be simply summarized as having a negative impact of production intensity as management practices have various impacts on the different components of biodiversity; (iv) impact assessment studies linking management of LFSs and biodiversity reveal complex multi-level interactions between grassland or rangeland management and biodiversity; (v) a large range of management options are available to move towards biodiversitybased LFSs. We conclude that future research should address the challenge of collective management of wild biodiversity at higher levels of organization (landscapes, territories, etc.) and that such collective management would greatly benefit from the experience of domestic biodiversity.

Food safety and food quality perceptions of farmers’ market consumers in the United States

“…Worsfold et al (2004) investigated farmers' market consumers' food safety concerns and reported that most (86%) consumers have few or no concerns about the safety of the food available for purchase. However, as outlined in several recent reviews (Sirsat et al, 2015;Wright et al, 2015), foodborne disease outbreaks linked to farmers' markets have been reported in the past decade, and therefore, it is necessary to increase consumers' food safety awareness towards food products available at farmers' markets in order to better protect public health.…”

Interactions between Microbial Food Safety and Environmental Sustainability in the Fresh Produce Supply Chain

“…In many countries around the world, farmers’ markets or local food markets are popular settings that facilitate consumer access to local fresh produce. Despite concerns regarding the food safety procedures in such markets [ 52 ], the potential higher prevalence of microbial contamination in the products sold in farmers’ markets compared with other retailers remains controversial [ 47 , 53 ].…”

Securing Sustainable Livestock Production Systems in an Uncertain Economic Climate: Nurturing Flexibility and Resilience

“…These very poor ratios affected herd sustainability, even though performance levels for replacement heifers were better ( Table 1) Hn: Holstein; Mo: Montbeliarde; AI: artificial insemination. 1 Percentage of pregnant cows served once or twice. 2 Percentage of animals calving after being served during the breeding period.…”

“…Incorporating the precepts of sustainable development in order to build and assess new technical agricultural systems hinges on breaking away from the rationales underpinning these systems and moving towards more holistic objectives encompassing far more than the simple production output function [1]. There are two key drivers to this breakaway: (i) reinventing how researchers interact with the other actors involved in the process of developing new systems and their multiple outcomes [2,3], and (ii) producing tools capable of quickly rendering a priori system assessments [4,5] as a first step towards subsequently deploying the systems in compliance with complex multicriteria specifications [6].…”