Disease outbreaks show food safety underpins security

Icommended SA’s food security status in my personal blog in February. This was after the Economist Intelligence Unit placed the country in 44th place out of 133 countries in the 2017 Global Food Security Index. SA is essentially the most foodsecure country in Africa.

Some conflated the blog post with land reform issues, arguing that the proposed expropriation without compensation policy would tamper with the progress made thus far.

But my intention was to shed light on the meaning of food security. The index captures the most critical aspects of food security, as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN: affordability, availability, quality and safety.

While affordability and availability have been a key focus following the robust agricultural output of the 2016-17 production season, the quality and safety aspects have seldom been mentioned in food security debates. This is regrettable as quality and safety are important levers of food security. A case in point is the drastic effects of recent disease outbreaks, such as avian influenza and listeriosis.

In 2017 more than 4.8million birds were culled across the country because of avian influenza. This is not unique to SA. Some European and Asian countries also encountered the disease from 2016 to the beginning of 2017 but managed to address it swiftly.

However, the challenges seem to be lingering in SA. On Monday, in an article published in Business Day, the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries called on poultry farmers in coastal areas to be on high alert amid fears of a fresh outbreak of the deadly avian flu.

If it rears its ugly head once again, it will surely be double jeopardy as the South African food sector is still grappling with listeriosis. Reports suggest that listeriosis was located in a few meat processing factories, and it took SA more than five months to trace them.

This indicates some level of inefficiency in our food safety monitoring systems.

Another case worth monitoring pertains to increasing honey imports from China. SA’s honey imports increased from 476 tonnes in 2001 to 4,206 tonnes in 2017. This is mainly due to steady domestic demand, coupled with a decline in domestic honey production. But it is worth highlighting that on average 76% of SA’s honey imports came from China in the past 17 years.

I mention this because the Chinese honey has hit the headlines in the past — and not in a good way.

In 2014 food24.com ran an article highlighting the fact that Chinese farmers had been caught producing counterfeit honey. Europe had similar experiences with imported honey, to the extent that European legislators ranked honey sixth on a list of 10 products most at risk of food fraud. This has been a big scandal, with Netflix even shooting a documentary about it entitled Rotten — Lawyers, Guns & Honey.

These food safety risks are concerning. Going forward, discussions about food security shouldn’t lean only on availability and affordability. More emphasis should be placed on quality and safety.

This is everybody’s responsibility — consumers, food producers and regulators.

Consumers should be more discerning about the food they eat. Producers should do more to improve the safety of the products they put on the market and be more responsible with food labelling.

Similarly, the regulators, particularly the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, should continue working closely with the Department of Health to ensure consumer safety.

WHILE AFFORDABILITY AND AVAILABILITY HAVE BEEN A KEY FOCUS, QUALITY AND SAFETY HAVE SELDOM BEEN MENTIONED IN FOOD SECURITY DEBATES