Moving health to the heart of agri-food policies; mitigating risk from our food systems

Abstract

Our food systems are progressively more industrialized and consolidated with many modern food value chains involving multiple countries and continents, and as such being associated with changes in risk profile and impacts of emerging and re-emerging diseases. Disease outbreaks that sweep through a single region can have massive impacts on food supply, while severe outbreaks of human pathogens can disrupt agricultural labor supply or demand for products perceived as ‘unsafe’. Market pressures have generally rewarded production of cash crops for fuel and energy dense, low nutrient processed foods over production of fruits and vegetables for local consumption. Climbing rates of food-related NCDs and pre-existing conditions leave the population increasingly susceptible to infectious diseases that are often driven by or arise from the food system. Therefore disease and diet from our food systems cause impacts on human health, and human health issues can impact on the functioning of the food system. The COVID-19 outbreak is the most recent example of food system driven disease emergence and of massive supply and demand shocks in the food system, experienced as a direct and indirect result of this disease. The effects of the food system on disease spread (and vice versa) must be addressed in future plans to prevent and mitigate large scale outbreaks. Health policies must acknowledge the food system as the base of our health system, as must agri-food policy recognize the pre-eminence of human health (directly and indirectly) in decision making.

Digital Strategy Decision Support Systems: Agrifood Supply Chain Management in SMEs

“…When managers are aware of the business environment, they can define crucial IS goals and opportunities to improve the supply chain’s effectiveness. Furthermore, they can assess these goals to identify high-level IS strategies during strategy conception [ 46 , 47 , 48 ].…”

“…Increasing concerns over food safety [ 39 ], the processes of food production [ 40 ] and the technologies used [ 41 ], the substances added to food products [ 42 ], and the environmental, social [ 43 ], and ethical [ 44 ] dimensions of agrifood goods lead companies involved in ASCs to constantly redefine their purpose and values, and to modify their strategies accordingly. The shift of relevant policies towards more healthy and environmentally friendly food [ 45 , 46 ] further increases the need for companies to continuously adapt their strategies as a means to sustain their market position.…”

The impact of COVID-19 on Old World Camelids and their potential role to combat a human pandemic

“…Working in the animal production sector, we are all aware of the importance and consequences of various infectious diseases affecting livestock. In the last 30 years, there were a number of major zoonotic or nonzoonotic animal disease outbreaks, such as bovine spongiform encephalitis, food and mouth disease, and African swine fever, just to mention a few, with enormous direct and indirect effects on animal production and on international trade causing huge economical losses ( Knight-Jones and Rushton, 2013 ; Patterson et al, 2020 ). However, these infectious diseases mainly affected specific regions of the world, only a portion of the food supply chain and stakeholders involved in that activity.…”

Global Burden of Animal Diseases: a novel approach to understanding and managing disease in livestock and aquaculture

“…Once institutionalised, the longitudinal estimates generated will help to guide the allocation of resources to major problems and allow the evaluation of animal health programmes. The urgency of such work has never been greater, with the rise in the proportion of human diseases coming from animals (19), the greater frequency of disease outbreaks (20), the potential scale of the impact of an emerging zoonotic disease that becomes transmissible among humans (e.g. COVID-19) and the role of livestock in climate change.…”