Using tools such as foresight, FAO identifies, evaluates, and prioritizes emerging trends and drivers within and around agrifood systems that may have food safety consequences.
Source: FAO
In the face of economic, social, and environmental challenges, increasing efforts are being made to transform agrifood systems to ensure that the growing global population has access to nutritious, safe, and affordable food. Given the recognized importance of food safety, tools like foresight, which consists of forward-looking techniques, are needed to identify and evaluate the main global drivers, associated trends, and other concerns that may develop in the future.
Simply said, food is stored safely around the world with the joint efforts of all key players in the food supply chain: national authorities creating appropriate guidelines and standards, food producers adopting good practices, entrepreneurs following regulations, and consumers learning safe food handling methods. The foresight strategy used by FAO was based on horizon scanning, which is characterized as “the systematic examination of potential hazards, opportunities and likely future developments which are at the margins of current thinking and planning” in addition to being a potential strategy that “may explore novel and unexpected issues, as well as persistent problems and trends”. The horizon scanning process starts with an exploratory approach in which data is gathered and scanned from a wide range of data sources, then prioritized, analyzed, and disseminated. The approach consists of three major steps including (1) monitoring and collecting of information from multiple sources, (2) assessing and analyzing collected information against certain predetermined criteria, and (3) effectively communicating the results to wider audience.
Meanwhile, the identified current and emerging interconnected socio-economic and environmental drivers were (1) systemic overarching drivers, (2) drivers directly affecting food access and livelihoods, (3) drivers directly affecting food and agricultural production and distribution processes, and (4) drivers regarding environmental systems.
Reference:
FAO. 2022. Thinking about the future of food safety – A foresight report. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb8667en
