Dr Helen Darling: Will data save us when it comes to safe food?

We need food that is prepared in the most efficient and sustainable manner, says Dr Helen Darling. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

OPINION:

Food safety is a complex issue. In its simplest form it is food safe to be consumed. But that doesn't reflect what we really need – safe food.

We need food that is prepared in the most efficient and sustainable manner, that is nutritious, that is transported with efficacy and with a low carbon footprint, that is distributed equally and that generates minimum waste. Thinking about food safety without considering how the broader food system works will not necessarily mean that we have more safe food on our plates.

First though it's interesting to think about the food in our supermarkets. With the exception of primary products such as fruit, vegetables and meat, most of our food contains more than one ingredient.

Available primary products vary too, depending on production methods (for example, organic or traditional) or processing (fresh or UHT milk). Multi-ingredient products can contain ingredients from multiple sources, and sources that can vary according to availability and price.

We are wrong to assume our food system is simple; while primary products have a short supply chain most of supermarket products do not. We are fortunate to have robust systems that protect consumers, but these are not invincible.

It is with a great deal of interest then that I read the remarks by the US Food & Drug Administration Commissioner, Frank Yiannis, on the state of food systems. Yiannis was previously the head of food safety at Walmart and a champion of the use of blockchain in food systems (that's a whole other topic). Blockchain was going to save us all apparently!

Yiannis was speaking at the International Association for Food Protection's annual meeting, is recognised as a leader in food safety and championed the notion of a food safety culture and so his commentary about the state of food systems is given some weight.

As Yiannis says "The sheer scope and scale of the global food system is daunting. On top of that, we're facing a multitude of new pressures, whether its labour shortages, supply chain bottlenecks, effects of climate change, regional conflicts, or inflationary headwinds"; he may have been speaking of the US but those issues are pertinent to every region of the world.

So, what does he propose as a solution? A transparent and data-informed global food system, but this doesn't sound like anything new. There are, however, some changes in where the data come from. New regulations in the US have seen the beefing up of traceability to include "key data elements" and "critical tracking events".

Yiannis likens these to the concrete foundations for a safer food systems. To my mind, these should have been key elements of any robust traceability system worth its salt. The key changes or drivers for 'the new' US food system seem to be focused on data and this data will be converted to predictive, prescriptive and preventive information. Aspirational stuff.

A system is described that will allow collaboration and data sharing and this data sharing is not, as we often see, data hoarding. Yiannis suggests that data will be shared between private companies and between public and private entities. This level of cooperation would improve food systems, indeed it would improve the world; however, it seems somewhat idealistic.

Yiannis is not wrong – shared data would improve food systems yet history tells us that this is unlikely to happen. Commercial entities are unlikely to share anything but the bare minimum with regulators to protect commercially sensitive data; regulators are unlikely to share anything but what they are constitutionally compelled to. While the concept is good, the reality is that this has the hallmarks of another great concept that moves us no further in ensuring more, safe food is available and less safe food is wasted.

So what data can save us? I believe that consumers hold the key to what is happening in the food system. Reports from consumers can highlight emerging issues or trends (good or bad) and, when coupled with data from other sources, can be an incredibly powerful tool in identifying issues.

This is important because the sooner an issue is identified the sooner it can be rectified.

To us (and this is why we have been working alongside consumers for the past two years), the overlooked consumer is the key to a robust food system – the final safety net where things that have 'slipped through' the imperfect food web are caught.

- Helen Darling has a PhD in Public Health and is the founder of Sumfood and InstatData.