Food Safety Cambodia

[Kristin Dampeer]

Womenplay important roles in preventing foodborne diseases throughout the food system, from agricultural production and food processing to vending and home meal preparation. Understanding gender dynamics in value chains and households can inform more effective food safety practices, policies, and outreach. This webinar will share insights from Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety projects on engaging and empowering women in aquaculture (Bangladesh), produce production (Cambodia), and household food safety (Nigeria).

Because improving food safety often involves adopting new behaviors, the researchers needed to first understand the perceptions and potential barriers to change among people growing and selling vegetables. To collect these data and strengthen local research capacity, they offered a quantitative survey development course aimed primarily at Cambodian graduate students.

The students completed surveys with 69 vegetable growers in the provinces of Battambang and Siem Reap and 31 vendors in Phnom Penh. The quantitative questionnaire asked participants about their perceptions of the importance of vegetable safety, frequency of vegetable contamination, and health impacts of consuming contaminated vegetables as well as about where vegetable contamination primarily occurs and who is most responsible for preventing it.

The majority of respondents reported being at least moderately concerned about produce food safety. However, as the researchers had hypothesized beforehand, most participants appeared to be more familiar with the risks and impact of chemical contamination, likely due to several high-profile outbreaks of foodborne illness caused by chemical contaminants and programs that address the proper use of pesticides. In contrast, they were less likely to associate microbial contamination with serious health effects, which can include severe malnutrition, organ failure or death.

Most respondents identified farms as the primary site of vegetable contamination, despite the risks of cross-contamination with uncooked meat at informal markets. The study also indicated that respondents generally believed that food safety could be improved at different stages of growing and selling vegetables.

The Safe Food, Fair Food for Cambodia project identified food safety impacts and barriers using system effects modelling. The modelling led the project to focus activities on the pork and poultry value chains and to target two key pathogens: Salmonella spp. and Staphylococcus aureus. The project conducted activities in traditional markets in all 25 provinces of the country.

More than 2 billion people fall ill each year from food they eat. Foodborne disease (FBD) is not only a major public health problem but also a barrier to smallholder farmers who wish to sell in high value domestic and export markets. As FBD is predicted to worsen under climate change, tackling FBD matters for climate adaptation. Though women have an important role in livestock value chains, extensive research by ILRI and others has shown that women tend to drop out of more complex value chains that demand greater food safety assurances, missing opportunities from these profitable value chains. Hence, supporting informal markets to provide safer food can achieve multiple outcomes of improved health, nutrition, equity, livelihoods, and, resilience to climate change.

Like many Asian countries, Cambodia has a rich tradition of tasty and nutritious foods. Animal source foods (ASF) are an important part of the cuisine with pork, fish, and poultry products widely consumed. The great majority of livestock products are produced by smallholders, many of them women, and sold in traditional, wet markets, where women also predominate as retailers. Again, as common in Asia, recent years have seen growing concern over the issue of food safety. Welcome development is accompanied by urbanization, rapid increases in demand for livestock products and, as a consequence, rapid changes in supply chains, which become longer, more complex, and less transparent. Trust in food goes down, often with good reason as the food system develops in a way that provides little rewards for those with good practices, but high rewards for those who carry out bad and unsafe practices.

In Cambodia, there is much concern but little reliable evidence on the health burden of FBD; its multiple costs; the hazards, foods and value chains most responsible for the burden; or, the best means to manage and communicate food safety risk. In the absence of evidence, misperceptions dominate food discourse: opportunities are lost and scarce resources are spent managing minor problems, while the major issues go to the back of the queue.

Food safety is often managed in a sectoral way and a key component of our research is to ensure better integration of food safety, nutrition, and equity objectives. We will investigate, for the first time in Cambodia, the links between nutrition and food safety in the context of ASF. The findings will help both nutrition and food safety communities better implement initiatives by leveraging synergies and minimizing trade-offs between attaining nutrition and health outcomes. Given the predominance of women in ASF retail, processing and household use, gender aspects must be fully integrated for the project to succeed. This includes developing gender disaggregated FBD health and economic burdens, ensuring the risk management project meets the different needs of women and men, and developing recommendations for risk management and communication that are gender sensitive and equitable.

Jessie Vipham, associate professor of food safety in the department of animal sciences and industry, was honored by the U.S. State Department's Office of Science and Technology Cooperation as runner-up for the U.S. APEC Science Prize for Innovation, Research and Education, or ASPIRE, on Jan. 11 in Washington, D.C.

ASPIRE is an annual award hosted by the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, Policy Partnership for Science, Technology and Innovation that recognizes young scientists who have demonstrated a commitment to excellence in scientific research and cross-border collaboration.

For 2023, the ASPIRE prize focused on innovative research that advances society through the theme of "inclusive science, technology, and innovation for a resilient and sustainable environment." Vipham was named runner-up for the prize for her long-standing and foundational research partnership with the Royal Agricultural University, Institute of Technology and Pasteur Institute in Cambodia to advance understanding of food safety hazards in the vegetable value chain in Cambodia and build institutional capacity of food safety research in-country.

"Since she started her career at K-State, Jessie has developed into a global leader in international food safety research," said Nina Lilja, associate dean for international agricultural programs. "She provides a strong vision for what transformative research combined with thoughtful capacity building can do to reduce the global burden of food-borne disease."

"Diarrheal disease drives infant mortality rates, poor nutritional outcomes, lost wages, medical costs, etc., and these issues are often the most compounded in parts of the world with low economies," said Vipham. "It was exciting to have food safety recognized at a forum like APEC."

In addition to her work in Cambodia, Vipham has had an extensive portfolio of international research in food safety, including in Ethiopia, Paraguay and Bangladesh. The award is co-sponsored by scientific publishers Wiley and Elsevier. As part of her selection as a runner-up, Vipham will receive a $1,200 cash prize.

Food safety remains a significant public health concern in Cambodia. Between 2010 and 2015, over half of the reported disease outbreaks were caused by food poisoning or diarrhea. Additionally, between 2014-19, 134 outbreaks of foodborne diseases were identified as having been caused by poor hygiene practices during food preparation, incorrect storage temperature control, cross-contamination, and the use of unsafe water and ingredients.

Stressing the importance of joining hands and collaborating on food standards to safeguard human health, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Assistant Representative Programme, Kosal Oum said:

In line with this value chain approach to food safety, the discussions during the commemoration event covered an array of topics, including food standards in production, food standards for street vendors and stallholders, protecting consumer health and ensuring fair practices in the food trade, food standards and labelling, school food standards, and the journey towards global compliance, among others. The range of subjects highlighted the importance of different parties and sectors and the impact of food safety standards on consumer and public health and the economy.

The celebration provided an opportunity for stocktaking on achievements made in fostering the development of food standards and for providing an agreed strategy with collective priorities moving forward. Such achievements include the historic passing of the Food Safety Law by His Majesty Norodom Sihamoni in 2022 as well as other laws and policies such as the Law on Standards of Cambodia, the law on Consumer Protection, as well as the Law on the Management of Quality and Safety of Products and Services. With the laws in place, much remains to be done towards enforcement to ensure the attainment of safe and nutritious food for all.

The World Food Safety Day celebration was organized jointly by development partners: FAO, WHO, UNIDO, WFP, iDE, Nutrition International, World Vision International, Adventist Development and Relief Agency, Hellen Keller International. Organization was in partnership with the Royal Government of Cambodia, through Council for Agricultural and Rural Development, together with the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Commerce.

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