Achieving Sustainable Food Production

This week the National Farmers Union in the UK reported that if the country had to survive only on the food it produced, by now the UK would have run out.

The stark reminder from the NFU was to launch a push to produce more food in the UK and to get backing for British farmers.

The NFU president Peter Kendall said: “To think that today’s date would signal the time when our domestic food supply runs out is frankly alarming.

“As an industry we have had a challenging decade but the realisation has dawned that as a nation we can’t simply go around the world chasing the cheapest deal for our food.”

While such a stark fact may be a boost to British farming to produce more, it also signals another fact, that the global trade in food is essential for a sustainable global food supply.

Some parts of the world will always rely heavily on those areas that are able to produce more to be able to feed their populations.

But as the world population grows, it should also bring home that the world agriculture and livestock sector needs to look at ways it can produce more and waste less.

At the same time as the world needs to rely more and more on trade to maintain a sustainable food supply, countries around the world also need to look at how that food is traded and what guarantees are in place to ensure as it moves across borders from country to country, it is maintained as health and wholesome.

All too often the sustainability of the global supply chain is threatened because of food safety threats or perceived food safety threats.

According to the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) the movement of food around the world is producing fresh challenges for food safety.

Competition and price pressure in the food markets mean that international trading channels for goods such as meat products have now become a matter of course.

BfR President Professor Andreas Hensel said: "The monitoring systems for foods are very different in the countries they are produced in.

"The manufacturers and importers must also guarantee the safety of imported food."

In particular diseases which can be transferred to humans through pathogens in food can have far-reaching economic significance in addition to the health risk for consumers.”

While there needs to be guarantees about the safety of the food as it goes from one country to another, these guarantees at times have been used not only as food safety checks but trade barriers to help protect domestic production.

When criteria established by organisations such as Codex Alimentarius are set out as the standards to be met for cross border trade in foods, then they should only be used as food safety measures and for the protection of the consumer and well-being of agriculture and livestock and not as discriminatory protectionism.