Food safety and public health

Published on August 29, 2024   51 min

A selection of talks on Methods

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0:00
I'm Alberto Mantovani. I'm Italian, and I'm a veterinarian. I've worked almost 25 years in the field of food safety. My expertise is mainly in toxicology and food safety. I will talk more, in general, on food safety and public health, why we bother about food and food safety when dealing with public health. I'm a member of the Italian National Food Safety Committee. I'm still an expert at FAO and the European Food Safety Authority. All these experiences, the national, international, and European experiences that I will quote several times during my presentation, provided me an outlook of food safety well beyond my specialized field of toxicology. I'll try, in fact, to show you that food safety is a fantastic field for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary cooperation in order to achieve public health objectives.
1:17
Let's look at what is food safety in the WHO, World Health Organization, website. First of all, it's plainly said that safe and nutritious food is the key to promote good health. Interdisciplinary approach is required, because hazards are numerous and diverse from bacteria, but also chemicals or allergens. And there are more than 200 food-related diseases recognized by the WHO, starting from the very acute, like diarrheas, to the very chronic and life threatening like cancers. What's the impact? I'm just quoting numbers from the WHO website, 600 million ill cases after eating contaminated food each year, according to an estimate a few years ago. Four hundred and twenty thousand deaths each year, and the loss of 33 million healthy life years, which is a lot. Food safety, nutrition, and food security, which is the availability of food, are closely linked, because unsafe food which is less available for people creates a vicious cycle of disease and malnutrition. Malnutrition does contribute more to food safety hazard, and this particularly affects vulnerable groups like the elderly, the sick, and especially our future infants and young children. Again, there's an impact on food safety from the socio-economic scenario, because safe food supports national economies. No problem in food supply. Less problem in trade and tourists. People are more confident in coming to your country and eating at restaurants. Therefore, it's a stimulus to sustainable development. There are a number, and we will mention them, of planetary drivers that are changing the scenario of food safety. The globalization of food trade. We will see it again. The world population growth, so more people wishing to eat more proteins, wishing to have more calories, and basically, more people in our world, so more need for safe food. Climate changes that are changing the scenario and the rapidly changing food system.

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