Presented by Delia Grace at the inception workshop for the 'Reducing Disease Risks and Improving Food Safety in Smallholder Pig Value Chains in Vietnam' project, Hanoi, August 14, 2012.

1. What we have learned about disease
risks and food safety in the informal
food sector
Project Inception Workshop: Reducing Disease Risk and Improving Food
Safety in Smallholder Pig Value Chains in Vietnam
August 14, 2012, Melia Hotel, 44B Ly Thuong Kiet Street, Hanoi 1

2. Outline
 How we have learned
– Participatory risk assessment
 What we have learned
– Importance, costs & benefits of informal sector
 Lessons from what we have learned
– More and better evidence
– Risk-based approaches
– Participatory & stakeholder approaches
– Incentive-based solutions 2

3. Definition: informal sector
 Markets where many actors are not licensed and do not pay
tax (e.g. street foods, backyard poultry, pastoralist systems);
 Markets where traditional processing, products, and retail
practices predominate (e.g. wet markets, traditional food
processing);
 Markets which escape effective health and safety regulation
(most domestic food markets in developing countries).
3

4. Assessing food safety in
informal markets
 Risk based approach
– Risk pathway
– Codex alimentarius framework
– Qualitative & quantitative
 Mixed methods
– Biological sampling
– Household/individual questionnaires
– Check lists
– Participatory appraisals
4

5.  30 studies on food safety in informal markets
– 25 PhD and MSc students
 10 consumer preference studies
 8 national food safety situational analyses
5

6. 6

7. 7

8. 8

9. Outline
 How we have learned
– Participatory risk assessment
 What we have learned
– Importance, costs & benefits of informal sector
 Lessons from what we have learned
– More and better evidence
– Risk-based approaches
– Participatory & stakeholder approaches
– Incentive-based solutions
9

10. Importance of the informal sector
Vietnam:
•80% pork from small-scale Percent milk marketed via informal
farmers (<100 pigs) markets in selected countries in the
region
•97% pork sold in wet markets
Country Percent
China
Kenya 86
•96% farms small scale (<50 pigs)
Tanzania 95
supply 48% of pork
Uganda 90
•80-90% pork sold in wet
Rwanda 90
markets Ethiopia 95
Malawi 95
Zambia 90
Source, A. Omore, 2006
10

11. Benefits of the informal sector
1 billion people < $1.25/day depend on livestock
65% of Vietnamese households keep pigs
Premium for formal sector
Direct full-time employment created
China: super-market meat 10%
through dairying at the farm level in Kenyan
premium
highlands
Kenya – pasteurised milk 25-40%
premium
Small & Large
medium scale scale
100 litres milk handled per day
generates: Workers 735,000 105,000
- 5.6 jobs making milk sweets in % of 87% 13%
Bangladesh
total
- 10 jobs selling milk snacks in Ghana
11

12. Increasing concern over food safety
In 7 developing countries studied
Many/most concerned over
food safety (40 to 97%)
WTP 5-10% premium for
safety
Younger, wealthier, town,
supermarket-shoppers
willing to pay more for
safety
Buy 20-40% less during animal
health scares
Jabar et al, Lapar et al

13. High levels of hazards Milk
Xenobiotics
Chemicals
Pathogens
Allergens
Zoonoses:
 Bacterial
Viral
Parasitic
Prion
Manure
Social conflict Xenobiotics
Traffic accidents Chemicals
Injuries Pathogens
13
Environmental degradation Aesthetic

14. Variable levels of risks
and risk factors
 4% consumers Vietnam report to GIT illness in
last 2 weeks (no relation pork or meat consumption, strong
relation vegetable consumption)
 9% consumers in Nigeria (strong relation meat consumption)
 23% consumers in Nagaland (no relation pork, meat or
vegetable consumption, strong relation hygiene)
 43% Nigerian butchers (strong relation group, gender, hygienic
practice, eating own products)
14

15. Findings often counter-intuitive
100
90 Supermarket
Wet market
80
Village market
70
60
% UNACCEPTABLE
50
v
40
30
20
10
0
Total bacteria Enterobac Staph Listeria Residues 15

16. Risk mitigation
Average of
17.25 risk
mitigation
strategies
used
Farmers who
believed UA
was legal used
more
strategies
16

17. Improvements are feasible,
efffective,affordable
 Branding & certification of milk vendors in Kenya: led to
improved milk safety & saved economy $33 million
 Peer training, branding, innovation for Nigerian butchers led
to 20% more meat samples meeting standards and cost $9
per butcher but resulted in savings $780/per butcher per
year from reduced COI
 Providing information on rational drug use to farmers, led
to knowledge increase x 4, practice increase x 2, disease
decrease by 1/2 17

18. Implications of learnings
Predominance of informal sector
 High levels of hazards, variable levels of risks,
 Highly context specific, risks often counter-intuitive,
 Management of risks not currently effective
 Small number of actors & practices cause most of the risk
Implies
Need to generate evidence for local context
Need for approaches based on risk
18

19. Risk-based approaches
 Evidence based methodology
– Transparent, facilitates
communication
– Science-based, reproducible,
falsifiable
 Standard for international trade
– “Health and safety aspects of Codex
decisions and recommendations
should be based on risk assessment”
 Differentiate between hazard and risk
 Allow risk targeting
 Allow identification of critical control
points 19

20. Evidence generation
 What hazards are present?
 What risk do they present to human health?
 How big a risk do they present?
 What do they cost?
 What other losses can they cause?
 Where and how can they be controlled?
 How effective is control?
 How much will it cost?
 How can actors be motivated to change
their behaviour to adapt control?
 How can policy and regulation enable this?
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21. Implications of learnings
Food safety often resource constrained
 In appropriate regulation can lead to paradoxical increase
in risk
Most risk management done by value chain actors
 Management of risks not currently effective
 Small number of actors & practices cause most of the risk
Implies:
Participatory & stakeholder led
 Creates ownership
Incentive-based solutions
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22. Participatory
approaches
 Data collection
 Understanding cultural practices
 Introducing solutions
 Generating ownership
Incentive  Visibly fewer animal deaths
based  Branding to increase sales
 Training & certification to avoid
penalties
 Organizing to increase social status
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23. Acknowledgements: ACIAR for funding this project
BMZ, IE, USAID, DFID, IDRC, ACIAR