 wherever you are. You are very welcome to our celebration of World Food Safety Day. Let us wish you all a very happy and healthy World Food Safety Day. It's a real pleasure to welcome you to a joint event organized by FAO's Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia with our WHO's office in Europe. We're very pleased that this is a joint event. My name is Mary Kenny. I'm a Food Safety and Consumer Protection Officer based in FAO and I will co-moderate the session today with Peter Hoskov in WHO Regional Office for Europe. Today's event is focused very much on food safety but we are looking at how in this year of the UN Food Systems Summit how we cannot discuss food systems or sustainable food systems if we don't have food safety preventive measures being implemented and the results from our food systems being healthy nutritious safe food. We'll also discuss a little bit how actions on the ground and how a lot of work is ongoing by different stakeholders to assure food safety. We know that achieving food safety itself needs a holistic systems approach which has been followed for many years and we're pleased to see that health and agriculture sectors with the private sector are collaborating more closely all the time and finally we will also be looking a little bit at interlinkages and overlaps and relations between one health and food safety. So that's my colleague Peter will go through our program a little bit more detail but that is really kind of the focus of our panel discussion today. A few housekeeping comments and we do have simultaneous interpretation so you may go to the interpretation button and look and choose English or Russian language thanks to Olga our interpreter throughout and we also welcome your questions in the Q&A button and in particular use the Q&A if you'd like to ask a question to the panel and then we also have the chat if you want to share any information or experiences with everybody online. Over to you Peter thank you have a good event thank you. Thank you very much Mary and good morning good afternoon to everyone on the line I see it's already 162 participants very well very much welcome to this world food safety day event it's only the third time we are celebrating world food safety day and it's a great pleasure and honor to be part of it and to join FAO in our joint event today. So thank you very much everyone for joining we've tried to put a very exciting program together we will first have the opening remarks by the FAO assistant director general for the FAO regional office for Europe and Central Asia followed by some welcoming remarks by the regional representative Dr. Hans Klugev from the WHO regional office for Europe that would be followed by a keynote presentation by Delia Randolph who has joined us from Nairobi and the keynote speech will be followed by a panel discussion we have four panelists with us today they're all online and ready to take up the debate and discuss the food safety in the context of sustainable food systems also bringing in the one health approach which is very much on top of the agenda these days in the original program we had five panelists unfortunately one could not join us today we got a last-minute cancellation so we will proceed with the four panelists and they will be introduced a little later on in the program by the end of the session or the event today there will be a time for Q&A so as Mary said please put your questions in the Q&A under the Q&A button that you find on the screen and at the end of the session we hope to have time for the panelists or for Delia or for anyone here to to answer those questions and get the debate going so that's the outline of the program today let me first hand it over to Vladimir Rakinman the FAO assistant director general for european central Asia Vladimir the floor is yours thank you very much Peter and thank you Mary and all of you who put your efforts in organizing this important event dear colleagues and friends allow me to welcome you all to today's event to celebrate the third world food safety day FAO is very pleased to organize this regional event jointly with our good partners and friends in world health organization we see it as another example of our close collaboration in the region on very important issues while this is only the third year or the world food safety day observance food safety is important has long been recognized access to safe and nutritious food in sufficient quantities to lead active health allies is a basic human right and is central to FAO's core mandate of ending hunger and achieving food security for all the united nation's general assembly resolution of the year 2018 is very explicit in emphasizing that there is no food security without food safety in the year of UN food system summit it is important to acknowledge that efforts of the government's private sector produces and consumers to ensure food safety are all necessary parts of a well-functioning and sustainable food systems food safety goes beyond food security it saves lives enhances livelihoods and helps to protect the planet food safety has always been a priority for our region and we recognize the ongoing efforts of member countries continuously improving their regulatory frameworks scientific and technological capacities for official food safety controls to protect consumers and enable farmers and food businesses comply with food safety requirements and access to markets food safety is increasing prominence across the region with more activities and projects being implemented as we strive to achieve the 2030 agenda for sustainable development food safety is fundamental to many of the sustainable development goals including zero hunger as we advocate for greater investment and attention to food safety on this symbolic day we reaffirm the support and commitment to working with governments and partners to scale up efforts including strengthening resilient well-functioning safe food value chains together we focus on different aspects of food safety control systems but please allow me to highlight a few we're welcome that the number of countries continue regulatory reforms to adopt food safety rules and food controls along the farm to fork continuum and to enable access to local regional and international markets we also need to recognize that today food chains are more complex than ever which poses new food safety risks improving the scientific and evidence base for food safety decisions policies and assessing food safety risks determining the priority challenges and preventing hazards entering the food chain require additional attention this includes strengthening the connections between food safety authorities and academia research centers which ensure that research and science are properly used and applied I would also like to highlight the importance of implementing policy and practical support to enable primary food producers small and medium-sized enterprises to develop their capacities to produce and sell safe and good quality products through COVID-19 pandemic all those involved in food production and food supply chains had to adapt to new conditions and new market opportunities among the many lessons the experience of the last 15 months has raised the awareness of the importance of demonstrating compliance with food safety requirements as a key precondition to access markets keeping the focus on the need for comprehensive food systems approach and food safety FAO strongly advocates for collaborative and cross-sectoral actions to combat health threats associated with internet interactions between humans animals and the environment some of which may be foodborne the recently established regional one health coordination mechanism as a tripartite partnership of FAO WHO and World Animal Health Organization further strengthens and consolidates our work in the region including the fight against antimicrobial resistance in conclusion I would like to thank all of you for joining us today for this event I know that in parallel numerous events publications interviews twitter chats are being conducted in the countries of the region to raise awareness and recognize the importance of food safety in our region I would encourage you to look at what is happening at the national level you may follow most of these activities on the global webpage dedicated to world food safety day I would like to thank all our partners and panel members contributing to the event thank you very much for your attention and I wish you a very productive discussion thank you very much Mr. Vladimir for those very encouraging words and for the strong commitment to this day world food safety day so with this I will hand it over to dr. Hans Kluge the regional director for WHO in the european region unfortunately Hans could not join us in person but he has recorded a video statement that we will now show dear FAO and WHO colleagues dear friends on behalf of the WHO regional office for europe a warm welcome to today's event marking the third world food safety day food safety in the context of sustainable food systems every year in the WHO european region an estimated 23 million people get ill and 5 000 people die from consuming unsafe food food safety is a highly complex health issue involving multiple domestic and international stakeholders over 200 diseases are caused by eating food contaminated with bacteria viruses parasites or chemical substances in recent years food safety in the region has been affected by new developments that have changed the conditions in which food is produced processed traded and consumed globalization of the food chain has changed consumer habits and international trade in food and agriculture products is greater than before in the pan european region food exports increased by 25 percent from 2010 to 2019 this increased complexity increases risks of unsafe food spreading across borders and affects the way we manage food safety risks COVID-19 has imposed additional challenges for food producers and food safety authorities these include the need for implementation of measures to control and reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission in food businesses and the need for alternative control when business as usual is affected by lockdowns and public health measures addressing food safety and managing risks calls for a systematic approach and a collaboration across sectors we need to acknowledge that food safety is an integral part of sustainable food systems that deliver food security and nutrition today's event is a step towards clarifying the role of food safety in sustainable food systems a priority for the region and the world in unprecedented times sustainable food systems are supported by the one-half approach and the need to work with all stakeholders across sectors and borders to that end WHO FAO and OIE recently launched the one-half coordination mechanism in the european and central asia region to provide leadership convince stakeholders and coordinate action our goal better use of available resources more synergy and less duplication of efforts in the fight against health threats in the animal human and environmental interface where food safety is absolutely vital in line with sustainable development goals and doubly chose european program of work EPW doubly europe strives to support its 53 member states to strengthen food safety and the one-half approach to address health threats originating in the animal human environmental interface and to promote safe food for all today should inspire action at all levels to prevent detect and manage food safety risks in the region happy world food safety day thank you very much to Vladimir and Hans the regional representatives for WHO and FAO in the region for those very encouraging words your commitment to food safety and highlighting the importance of the day to day to celebrate and put focus on food safety for better health tomorrow i will hand it over to Mary to introduce our keynote speaker thank you thank you Peter and thank you Vladimir like a bitch and Mr. Hans Kluge as well from my from my side um good let us we are really pleased now in the next section of the program to have uh Delia Grace Randolph with us to give a short keynote presentation uh Delia is a professor in food safety systems at the natural resources institute university of Greenwich but Delia also has a long and ongoing work with the international livestock research institute based in Kenya as well Delia is an epidemiologist and and veterinarian and um has a long work experience in working in food safety Delia over to you thank you i think you will share your screen over to you thank you all it's it's a pleasure to be here um and uh to give a short presentation on um uh my 20 years experience working in food safety mainly in uh Africa and Southeast Asia um trying to find my trying to find my PowerPoint yes um while i'm trying to to put my slides i can't let me just say about you know food safety at one time it was really considered something like toenail illness you know it was not really a priority to development a priority to to uh to low and middle income countries um but recently uh with a kind of who a kind of a flagship present a report they found that the burden of the health burden of food safety was equivalent to that of HIV tuberculosis or AIDS so that really made food safety kind of come to the the top of the list of things which people in developing countries low and middle income countries were worried about it's always been a priority in high income countries partly because in high income countries we've we've more or less got rid of most of the infectious diseases so food safety is very important um i'm having some challenges in sharing Delia has shared it for you it's on the screen we can see it sorry gintero great um so linda will manage it for you so you can just advise when you want the next i'll just say next okay so next uh the next screen is looking at a little bit about illry the international livestock research institute based in kenya um which has three main objectives the first is uh adequate safe um okay have we lost delia uh delia you may want to put your presentation in screen mode oh no linda has it now okay okay please proceed so i'm just talking a little bit about illry where i've been working for the last 20 years i'm sorry my internet is a bit unstable and also uh unfortunately i broke my foot last week and i'm on painkillers so if i'm a little less clear than usual please forgive me so uh that's illry is is working on livestock and a lot of the food safety issues come from livestock products or else they come from green and leafy vegetables which are often um uh they are treated with um uh raw manure not composted raw manure which comes from animals so animals have a lot to do with with the food safety next slide please yeah this is just a quick look at the illry my roby campus we have biosafety level three facilities which is one of the very few in africa next slide please we also have a 1000 acre ranch in machakos where we can do uh you know we do various tests and experiments on animals next slide please so that's enough about illry now i'm going to talk about the informal sector which is where i've been working for the last 20 years and we define it as the absence of there's 100 definitions of the informal sector but here we describe it as the absence of structured sanitary inspection and this overlaps with the traditional sector street foods raw milk uh duke has kiosks and i'm sure even in central asia you must have many foods salt in uh what we would not really call the the modern supermarket hypermarket type sector because yeah that's why people sell food need food next so these are places we've we've worked in and and this is um the amounts of food which are salt in what we call the informal sector um uh you can read the numbers yourself but you can see that a lot of foods in africa india and we have lost that's mary again the internet connection yeah go ahead go ahead sorry i'm afraid the internet is not good i'm very sorry okay but when we look at the informal sector there's a high level of hazards i won't go through this in detail but you can just look at you know some of these numbers 98 percent of meat in nigeria is unacceptable uh in south africa which is one of the warm modern countries in africa and this is the formal sector 30 percent are unacceptable egypt farmed fish egypt game is is relatively you know uh up to date in in in its management 77 percent of fish are unacceptable and next slide please but this is a saying we have in food safety what you worry about and what kills you are not the same now i bet maybe half of the participants i see we have 211 are more worried about gmo's uh pesticides antibiotic residues things like that and they're not so worried about germs they they sort of think they can deal with germs so when we did this in vietnam uh we first asked people what their concern was and they basically said they were very concerned about chemicals and they weren't very concerned about germs and we knew this was wrong because we were food safety specialists uh but they didn't believe us so we had to do the tests in vietnam and what we found was that as you can see in the the chart only one percent were over the the regulatory levels and they had minor implications because they were so low but when we looked at the germs uh 12 13 percent of people were getting sick every year from salmonellosis which is a very nasty disease next slide and also experts are also wrong you might think you can trust the experts so the uh here in green you see the importance which experts said and in blue you see the burden which the who said and you can see that experts were very worried about things like anthrax and brucella but when you looked at the burden the burden was much more likely to be ecoli and our old friends salmonella next slide so one thing we often use and it works i've used this dozens of times in my my studies the Pareto principle it's called which means the vital few and the trivial trivial many and it means that up to 10 or 20 percent of diseases cause 90 or 80 percent of the burden and you can see this study i did with um top 13 zoonosis next 43 what should we be worrying about it should be the top 13 and yet we often worry about the next 43 uh and again the who found that the top 10 human diseases caused 90 percent of the burden next and this is when we look at our again this comes from the the best who study when we look at what is making people sick and killing them this is in uh dailies or years of life lost you can see it's germs it's worms toxins are very little and yet people worry much more about toxins next next please and this is another study you know sometimes i've heard many people when they're talking about foodborne disease they say we can't get money for it because what the the ministry of finance cares about is dollars not dailies so you need to come up with with some kind of costs in order for for the the ministry of finance to give money to the ministry of health uh and this is a study done by the world bank and you can see that uh the cost in low and middle income countries is 95 million billion dollars 95 billion dollars for lost productivity around about 15 per illness and five to seven for trade uh now we often for the past 20 years we've been investing a lot more in trade than we have in domestic costs so this world bank study is is very important because it shows we should be thinking about people getting sick in domestic markets you know not worrying too much about of course we we worry about trade but actually only a very few countries get a loss of income from trade whereas many many countries you can see them all there they lose a lot of money from productivity by people being sick by eating food in informal markets next oh so uh this one i'm i'm just going to go a little bit quickly through uh that the message is social economic and environment is key to food safety and a lot of it is you know you have to think about women you have to think about uh harassment by authorities you have to think about stunting and you have to think that food in informal markets is affordable compared to food in formal markets you know you know if you go to a street side seller you're going to get a better deal than you will if you go to a hypermarket next and again talking from a livestock perspective when we look at what are the foods that are making people sick and killing them uh it's basically animal source foods fish meat milk um and produce animal and green produce in blue next so the traditional way of looking at food safety has been what we call hazard based so you look at bad things be they germs or toxins and it tends to have been a very much top-down technocratic way of looking at food safety um it's unsystematic it's people look at things they would which upset them they don't look at things which made them sick and killed them um and they don't look at the the benefits and harms they don't look at the trade-offs between benefits and harms next so the modern way the the new way of looking at food safety is what something we call risk analysis which is a tool for decision-making under uncertainty and that has three components first of all you have to assess the risk and risk is different from hazard hazard is anything which could harm you risk is actually what is the burden on health and the probability the hat what we call the a combination of um severity and probability then we have to look at risk management and risk energy could be very expensive so you might be better to look at uh something which is less serious but cheap uh and then risk community Delia we're losing you again I wonder running out of time yes and can you kindly wrap up as well really interesting points but can you maybe you can draw to a close as well also the internet is a bit patchy yeah it is um next oh uh you can just read us next oh and these are just some pictures uh pigs in Vietnam next very clean slaughter not very good next transport even worse next next at retail two types of retail old fashioned and modern next but when we actually look at the bacteria we find that the modern is worse than the informal next thank you thank you very much uh Delia thank you you've covered a lot of issues and given us quite a global perspective as well of some of the realities of food safety on the ground and highlighting issues around uh informal sector but also some of the the food where food chain hazards can can enter um yours highlighted the importance of focusing on risk and known risk and the importance then of evidence and data and we will be focusing on that with our with our panel the last point I'll take from you is also the importance of getting high level commitment let's say uh and being able to build a business case so that countries do get adequate resources to invest in addressing food safety and supporting the the food business sector as well thank you thank you very much Delia again and uh we will uh thank you for joining us we know you've been on sick leave and uh we hope that we can you can contribute further to the panel now we are going to before we come to the panel discussion we would like to show you a very short video that was prepared especially for this year's world food safety day I think we will look at it in English and then in in Russian thank you Linda because then I see there's requests for links and I'm sure uh my colleague Gocce will share them with you I think they're all available on the on our FAO WHO websites we will we'll share the links as well good let's turn now to our our panel of experts and thank them all again for joining us today it's a real pleasure to introduce uh very quickly we have Tamara Boskovich Tamara is the head of the veterinary public health department ministry of agriculture forestry and water management in Serbia, Tamara you're very welcome we also have with us today uh Benjamin Sakste senior scientific officer uh food technologists from the German federal institute for risk assessment department of food safety uh Benjamin you're very welcome thank you we also then have Leon Ardos Goris uh Leon is working now as an international food safety expert supporting a number of activities with FAO and WHO previously along a career in food safety including uh with the private sector in Unilever as well in his former life and finally Naila Karstibikova and Naila is from ministry of health in Kazakhstan but is also the police contact point and is also the coordinator of the FAO WHO coordinating committee for Europe CC Euro so Naila very much supporting and Kazakhstan supporting codex work in the region as well let me turn and try this we start the discussion um with Tamara and Tamara we wanted to hear from you a little bit more on how you're working on food safety issues in Serbia and in particular how you're strengthening food safety policy and working across ministries and across sectors in order to address improve food safety and address many of the food chain risks as well that Delia highlighted in her in her presentation over to you Tamara thank you thank you Mary thank you for this kind invitation it is a pleasure and honor to be on this kind of event uh ministry of agriculture forestry and water management is central competent authority for food safety but one small part belongs to the ministry of health it's like dietary food informer or potable water but cooperation between two ministries is separated in our food safety laws so we are obliged to communicate and cooperate especially in case of foodborne illnesses or some outbreaks that we could see that it's still some issue worldwide we are trying to cooperate beyond these rules depleted in law so we organize some kind of working groups cancels in the area of antimicrobial resistance for example that's very actual right now and it will be if we take in consideration discovered the situation then in a zoonotic disease and everything that it's linked to some outbreaks when public health is connected with the food safety and animal health we could see also the animal health issue is maybe the most important to to provide the safe food on the market uh so we are trying to participate and we are a member of a many of international organization like FAO of course double HAO then OIE then we are also participating very frequently in european food safety agency activities so we try somehow to keep the the step with the the the developed very developed countries and countries that they have developed a risk assessment tools and we use very often these tools for some risk assessment in our country also we use a lot of project uh financed by EU by FAO by World Bank so we try to also do this research as professor delia mentioned and presented just to know on which level we are uh yes i can i can also confirm that the shariha coli and someone are still uh top top bacteria uh even in in Serbia even if we hygiene rules are quite strict in in our food safety system but they're still here and there will uh they will stay for sure but also viruses are very interesting like norovirus in raspberries that's uh like issue in Serbia and also we have certain problems with with the hepatitis virus in some in some food so that's our main target for the future future future uh working and we also we try to implement all monitoring programs for residue of battery medical products of pesticides of uh microbiological parameters on food which is in the market on a border control so we try to cover all segment of food safety system of course communicating with ministry of health also the part of animal byproducts that's our products from slaughterhouses and dairy factories they're they could be and they are big and very significant uh environmental issue so we are trying to connect with the environmental protection ministries and services and local services in able to control and cooperate uh cooperating this uh field of work because it's very important to protect environment because on that way we protect our animals plant and us as human beings thank you thank you Tamara yeah Peter I hand over to you yeah thank you thank you so Leon um COVID as it was also mentioned in the opening remarks by the regional representatives has really changed um changed the way we are I mean producing and consuming food not that COVID and the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease COVID-19 is a food safety hazard we know that it's not we know that food is not transmitting COVID-19 between people but still it has affected and we have seen a lot of news reports about how food factories sometimes have to be closed down because of transmission between workers as we have seen a lot of impact we have seen inspection levels going down and so on you have been involved in a study commissioned by FAO and WHO in the region to look at these issues and look at how COVID-19 has changed or affected the way we are managing food safety risks both in on the government side but also in the businesses can you tell us a little bit about how this study was conducted yes for sure thank you Peter for that question and also thank you all for the invitation to be part of the panel indeed I have been one of the experts involved in this study on COVID-19 we were not looking at direct effects on food safety as you say we know that the coronavirus doesn't make people ill should they be consuming food it's a respiratory illness and it can make people ill it can disrupt processes organizations and maybe from that more indirect perspective there could be food safety implications and and those would be the ones that we were we were looking at I think the important thing to note here as well is that a lot of stakeholders are involved in normal running of food safety you would have your component authorities for food safety sometimes it's one sometimes it's several you have private industry and you have of course of course as consumers as well a contribution to food safety so when we wanted to look at the different aspects of indirect food safety we consulted with these different stakeholder groups we also looked at maybe the consequences of when processes were upset maybe organizations were impacted could there be then an increase in foodborne illness levels that would be a signal that the food safety measurements or measures are not working very well but there are also concerns I believe that when food safety management has to be toned down maybe there's not enough resources for that food fraud could come up or maybe there could be more claims that could confuse and mislead consumers so those are aspects that we considered to be a part of the study and the main question there is is food safety impacted and how how did organizations respond so our scope was Europe and Central Asia and of course there are many organizations then that you would like to talk to but we took a kind of a snapshot we selected 22 countries from them we interviewed 37 different stakeholders 18 represented competent authorities 13 were with a private sector and eight sorry six were consumer organizations and we interviewed them about their experiences in the impact of COVID-19 on their organizations on their ability to run their food safety way and of working their their efforts and then also whether they would would be aware of any food fraud and any false claims being issued so it was very much an experience from those professionals in in real life that we were looking at and next to that we did some literature study but of course the pandemic is kind of set on going not a lot of literature definitely literature has been published certainly not on statistics of food safety impacts but these experiences were considered and are considered by us as very relevant to see what the impact really is and how organizations have managed their operations and whether there were already any learnings to take to further strengthen food systems so that's a little bit about the how of our study okay great thank you so much now there was a lot of questions there to be answered you raised a lot of questions now in your reply you've been through a lot of written resources you have interviewed a lot of people as you say from different sectors can you maybe highlight just the very key findings what what has the study really shown us has there been an impact on food safety and what what what did the the people you interviewed what did they tell you yes there has been an impact now let me go through the different stakeholders as they share their experiences with us so the 18 competent authorities that we interviewed many of them were impacted in terms of resources and in how they could run their processes for food safety thinking about food safety staff some of the staff had to be looking at other activities of the organization maybe supporting public health measures to be implemented in implemented in food business operations such as the COVID-19 mitigation measures so in effect quite a few of the competent authorities had fewer people available for food safety and the way they responded to that challenge was to focus on essential operations for food safety on high-risk food business operations and they were typically the operations dealing with food of animal origin and operations that are mandated by law to be checked the other thing that these organizations experience like many of us is that people couldn't visit operations to do an inspection or control they had to work from home they had to use new communication tools virtual platforms to interact with food business operators so the new way of working was kind of a challenge common to food operators as well as as governments from the government side what we heard back is that they are confident that the essential food safety supply chains were kept running without any impact that they experienced on food safety some organizations like the european union allowed regulatory flexibility in addition to maybe focus on high-risk operations and of course these kind of measures may help that with a few lower resource intensity and with new ways of working you still manage food safety to a good extent so that you can be confident we don't have solid statistics yet we don't know from the statistics point of view whether indeed there were no food safety illnesses increases there were no food fraud increases but we hear from the interviewees that they were not aware of them but so that's a very important point to check are those experiences comparable to what we see once there is more statistics information but from the government perspective there's a lot of adaptation to the new situation but with a focus and some flexibility a confidence that food safety was not implicated the same kind of reported was reported back from the food businesses so they had to manage let's say implementing new measures for covid they had to manage economic downturns and other business risks but in on the whole they were confident that food safety was not implicated they didn't have to change their food safety management systems interestingly a few that we interviewed were very happy that they that they could report that they had more international opportunities because they were complying to international standards and that these kind of things were checked more strictly and now with the with the covid pandemic but also the general also from the industry that virtual the new way of interacting was something that they had to get their heads around they thought that certain activities were very useful very much on the administrative side data exchange but they also experienced now audits over online and maybe certification activities online and they would think that some of that is useful and the simplification that could could remain in operation in practice after the pandemic so from the stakeholders so far everything is is well under control as far as they experienced it despite various challenges and also from the consumers we heard that back that they were quite confident still in food in the safety of food they were very concerned in the beginning and somewhat maybe let's say not well informed because there was a lot of ambiguity about food safety direct impacts early on but they soon learned that it wasn't a food safety and risk covid 19 is very much that concern for public health and they associated say good hygiene and sanitation measures that we all had to implement for public health now to good practices also associated to food safety and their own increased and hand washing and their own increases in looking at others doing this is something that they said well let's hope this stays for the future because it's a basic fundament of food safety as well along the food chain that we are very strict in hygiene and use proper sanitation and so that's a kind of an insider learning that hopefully will stay maybe on the on the improvement points communication was mentioned by all stakeholders again in this covid 19 case it was very was a big challenge to find out that covid 19 is really not a food safety concern but where the concern really was but it took a quite some time and in that time there were a number of challenges that added to the crisis so to speak mode and to some of the chaotic situations that we had early on so if that could have been done faster if that could have been communicated better broader maybe some challenges would have been shorter lived but communication is a typical learning point in any crisis whatever the topic will be there are more learnings and we hope to publish them soon in a report that will be publicly available thank you all right thank you Leon so a lot of changes and a lot of impact in terms of activities and practices there and for the actual outcome whether this has affected foodborne diseases as I understand it's still a little too early to say a long pandemic it's still ongoing but still it's it's too early to talk about the real foodborne disease impact that we have seen through this but thank you so much for for these reflections now Tamana I was I was wondering now you're sitting in in Serbia you have been directly faced with the pandemic and how it has affected and it has I'm sure affected the work that you're doing can you do you have any reflections on what Leon is now mentioning here is that something you can recognize as well from from the Serbian context okay we I cannot say that I think that food safety sector I think on producers they really get some benefit from the COVID-19 there was not any less production even people was buying more food than than usual so they didn't suffer a lot but yes they have to implement strict COVID measures that's for true what we faced and it's very important to emphasize is that because we're talking about food safety and food security there's people like people there was not enough food for the for the people who are like for for lower social category you know without unemployed people and poor people you know that that was the the the issue within COVID because this public kitchen was closed because of measures and there was not enough food for the people that was the the the the main issue and also Leon mentioned the food fraud and really take some advantage during the COVID especially in in honey production we we got we got issue related COVID they use a little bit our maybe not very efficient official control because people could not go everywhere to control everything so that was like impact on that and I would like also to mention because we're trying to export some meat and the milk to the public republic of China and in in in the light of this that food is not transmitter of COVID we are aware of that but China also acts asked for us to do a checking of packaging material and a surface of frozen meat regarding COVID so we had to establish this kind of of testing in Serbia that really caused some kind of impact on our food industry the other things are like Leon mentioned more or less the same good thank you thank you Tamara and thank you Peter and Leon for very interesting discussions and updates from the the recent work that's been ongoing looking at impacts of COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic we want to shift our thoughts a little bit now by by turning to you Benjamin Saxe from from BFR from the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment it's already been mentioned a few times by different speakers this morning the importance of science the importance of evidence to our to having sound food safety policy direction and we know that food safety risks are better managed when there is more data and evidence available and accessible to the food safety authority so we wanted to ask you in a country like Germany which is with a strong food control system how your institute is in BFR is working to manage data and what are maybe some of the emerging and changing issues that you're facing now and maybe in the future and how you were looking at data and evidence Benjamin you have the floor thank you very much again a very important question from my perspective first of all thank you very much also from my side to have the possibility to participate in such an important event today and for your kind introduction is probably many of you already know the BFR is a German Federal Authority responsible on one hand for risk assessments but also for communication and obviously as such we have a strong need for scientific data and these are our basis and at BFR we use data from a huge number of different sources so in some cases we use data from industry which is for example the case if we talk about legally regulated authorization procedures but of course we use data from universities research institutions which are published in the peer review journals we also get data from German food monitoring authorities which are responsible for the food control itself they provide us data for example about the occurrence of specific compounds and food products which reflects the situation at the German market and in addition the BFR also conducting own research not for control but for yeah basis basic activities where we identified some data gaps coming to the challenging issues now and in the future I would like to pinpoint three important aspects so the first one is a technical one because as you can imagine if you have a growing amount of data you need appropriate software tools for easy data management data handling you need systematic procedures for data input output and so on the second aspect is regarding data validity because even if you have a growing amount of data that does not necessarily always mean having good data so processing the data evaluating the data and selecting the data according to their relevance and reliability is an important issue and the third aspect I would like to mention is about data transparency so it becomes more important not only to communicate the scientific outcomes the scientific evidence but also to communicate the underlying databases on which we came to our conclusions to show that in a transparent manner to the public and that's obviously sometimes the conflicting issue especially if we talk about data from industry because they have their data protection claim which is fully okay but I think that's an ongoing discussion at the moment and it will be an important discussion also in future and yeah from this perspective data management data processing and also the evaluation is more important thank you Benjamin yes and I'm sure obviously very strong use of digital and online tools and you know very advanced in this regard as well to help you manage I guess these large amounts of data and diverse data yes yeah there's a key part and we were talking earlier also about looking at let's say one health risks or risk that can enter the food chain from at the interface from livestock to humans or looking at food chain risks that come from the environment into our our food chain and again a bit more of a specific question you're already quite detailed but if you can tell us a little bit more about how you're managing data in this area in terms of being able to understand and manage risks that can occur in the food chain from farm to fork and and what steps are particularly important to you in this regard thank you yes important point so first of all I would like to mention which was already mentioned today a few times one hearts concept because obviously it's very important not only to focus on food safety itself but also to other disciplines such as animal health environmental health as these factors are always to get connected with each other and the BFR has activities on that field to address that um for example we're members of international projects concerning these aspects um however the BFR has several activities in different parts alongside the food chain so to give you a few examples um we're part by developing and validating for example analytical methods suitable for food monitoring food control um an important part in this aspect is also the use of methods for checking for the authenticity for foods as food fraud is an upcoming issue as we already heard today the BFR for example developed open software tool called Food Chain Lab which is a software suitable for tracing food products which is very helpful in the context of foodborne diseases and disease outbreaks um we of course have strong corporations with international authorities but also with a private sector um to gather information on different aspects um as I already mentioned we conduct own research and to give you two examples here the transfer experiments are of importance and are also connected to the one health concept so we try to investigate in some cases where the critical compounds that may occur in feedstuffs might be transmitted to the animals and subsequently to the animal derived food products um we're involved in the development of code of practices um which may support also the food business operators um afterwards by producing safe and safe and sustainable foods and although every of these steps alongside the food chain is of high importance um we at the BFR are also very interested in evaluating and improving the databases when it comes to the exposure by the final products ready to eat products eaten by the consumers and we address these for example by um conducting a total diet study named the meal study and yeah altogether it's important to address every single step to gather information to get a better and clearer picture about um also the courses which might be relevant for problems thank you thank you uh Benjamin and and all of this I think is you're very focused on on the core science and the core data but clearly working very closely with your ministries and those making the food safety policy decisions I mean I think that's coming across that's completely correct yeah I mean as I already mentioned also risk communication is a very important topic on the one hand side the um yeah the communication to the ministry for example and to the risk managers but on the other hand fight on that's an important point to also to the final consumers because in many cases you have um we already heard today that there's a big difference between risk perception and real risks in some cases so it's important to communicate where the risks are really um lying and um how they may be reduced for example if you heard today about the Germans need we also have that kind of problems in Germany of course and here it's important to communicate to the consumers how they can prepare their meat how they have a good kitchen hygiene and so on good thank you Benjamin we could keep discussing longer but I am gonna in the interest of time we'll we'll hand over to Peter and I think we're going to go through a regional level angle now over to you Peter thanks exactly thank you so much Benjamin that's a really good insight so I mean scientific data information is extremely important to manage food safety risks but as some of the previous speakers have also highlighted this whole one health approach looking at food safety and sustainable food systems context requires some communication, sharing of information, collaboration across sectors and also across borders so countries in between and I think COVID has demonstrated quite clearly that no one country is safe until everybody is safe and the same goes for food safety food safety risks can easily and food safety hazard transfer from one country to another and an unsafe food can can quickly spread to many countries in the world so Nila I wanted to go to you now because you are in addition to being from the Ministry of Health in Kazakhstan you said in the introduction you're also the regional coordinator of the FAO WHO coordinating committee for Europe so what does that mechanism and the CC Euro which is also called how does that help facilitate this exchange of information between countries and strengthening collaboration between countries will particularly focus on on codex that's what standards develop well first I would like to thank you and you Peter for the invitation to take part in this event in the canon not in the canon but within today's world peace day food safety products well you probably know the European region is the largest region in the codex commission 52 members 51 countries and one organization members of the European Union not only that it is the largest it is also the most extraordinary on the one hand if it is well laid down the structure of the European Union on the other hand it is 10 post-soviet countries and countries of eastern Europe where the systems themselves control the questions of approaches to the issues of the solution in the codex elementary they are different and here is the most important task before Kazakhstan as a regional coordinator was revitalization of post-soviet countries because lately these countries are becoming members of the VTO become members of the codex commission but the activity of involvement in the work of the codex it was very, so to speak, at a low level, as they say and here is the 18th-19th year and Kazakhstan visited 10 post-soviet countries where we met with the faces of political decisions taking place starting with the administration of the president, the deputies and senators of the parliament, the interested ministries of the branches, and on the second day we have already arranged round tables and conferences and shared their knowledge of how it works well how it works well on the level of the country itself, because it is not a secret that the inter-business intersectoral approach is the main lock of the successful solution of the problems associated with food security and now in the 20th year of the sitting with the pandemic, of course, in the 21st year, we are now all the webinars are already held in the online mode and here, literally recently in April, in May, with the help of the European office, we held a webinar, an online webinar on the work with online tools for Turkmenistan, and also for Uzbekistan and the Kyrgyz Republic, we received support in developing documents in the position of the National Committee of the National Council on the issues of the Codex Alimentarius. In addition, as for Kazakhstan, literally today we have held a round table with the participation of the vice minister of agriculture, sorry, health care, the Ministry of agriculture, in general, all interested in the players of the food chain that we always talk about when we talk about food security, the international organization FAO, VOS, MEP was also accepted, the round table resolution was adopted, which we literally finish it and today, tomorrow, we will send out to all the participants of this round table. Last year, the Kazakhstan regional coordinator performed on the so-called independent dialogue on various courses a single goal that was organized by the international UNPO, the assembly of people in Eurasia in support of the summit on the fun system of the 21st year, where from the name of the region we were presented in the framework of the Codex Alimentarius in support of the summit on the fun system. It must be said that Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan are the grant owners of the Trastov Foundation, and within the Trastov Foundation, too, our country is made and these countries are very much for training and increasing the potential of interested people, in particular, in the middle of June, we will have a webinar for national experts to raise the potential of our scientific personnel in December of the 21st, the European Union within the initiative of the Beta Training for Safe of Food will be in the online regime, unfortunately, a large seminar will also be held for all countries of Eastern Europe, countries of Central Asia, countries of the Caucasian region. That's all I have, so the questions. Thank you, Naila. So a lot of things have happened and the CC Euro scheduled to meet only once every two years, but there's a lot of activities happening in between and the next session will be next year in 2022 in postponed because of COVID. But are there any activities in the lead-up to the next meeting that you would like to highlight here? All right. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. So upcoming events there to be marked in the calendar. We are running a little bit short on time, so I think I would hand it over to you, Mary, to continue this panel. Good. Thank you. Thanks, Naila, for those updates on important codecs work in the region and, yes, encouraging all member countries to also look out for the pre-CC Euro meeting, I guess, at the end of September. So thanks for marking that in our calendars, and I'm sure all the information will be available on the codecs website as well as we proceed. Tamara, we wanted to come back to you on one question related to small and medium enterprises, and again, Dilia very well focused on some of the real realities and challenges that small food producers or our value chains face in some countries and in some regions. So we'd like to hear a little bit from you from the food safety perspective and the ministry in Serbia of any concrete work that you've been working on of late to continue to support small businesses, small food businesses in adopting safer food safety management practices. Tamara, you have the floor. Okay. Thank you. For many of more than 10 years, we are implementing food hygiene of European Union, which we considered very strict and we pushed some burdens to our small producers. And in one moment, we figured that not that these small producers stop production, they just run away to the gray zone like we used to say. I have to say that we have support, we had support by the FAO in Serbia, and we were talking, we were have a lot of meetings with small producers for many years, two or three years we did, we passed through this process and we listened to them and we faced with their problem and our problem is competent authority and we are trying started to try to find solution for the both side. So we prepared was some kind of rule books, rule books regulation with derogation for small producers. And also also with support FAO, we prepared a couple of guidelines for meat and milk on dairy sector, how they can implement hygiene rules and self control rules. So somehow they started again to submit request to be in our register and to be on some way under our control. We also provided a lot of trainings for them on local level, also some campaign, just to focus on hygiene rules, that they also have to be feel aware that flexibility rules are not something that not consider hygiene. So we work a lot of more on hygiene than the other like structural conditions. Luckily, we don't have such photos like we could see on the on the photo presentation of Professor Delia. But also we had some issue, especially in mountain area where there is no potable water or water at all. There is no electricity. So hygiene rules are not not on the high level. It's quite quite actually jeopardize the human health. But we were working with them and I can say that now the maybe third of producers in Serbia are registered as establishments within flexibility principles. And also what was also the benefit that our ministry recognized this importance to keep this small producer alive. So also provides with some subsidies through national measures for them to upgrade their establishments and their knowledge. Yeah, thank you very much Tamara. And I know from our work in the region that there's there's really a strong need and priority and growing priority by governments and request from the private sector from the smaller businesses in particular for more support, appropriate policies and even some financial support combined with trainings and capacity development to really be able to continue to strengthen the food safety and demonstration of state food practices in the small and medium food businesses. So a really important area. I'm really interested to hear of the experiences and advances in Serbia, which I know would be of interest to other countries in the region or working on similar issues as well. So thank you very much for sharing that with us. And I see that we have a few questions, not too many, but a few questions in the in the Q&A. Some are being answered too, but maybe I hand over to you Peter if you want to try to take a few of these and handle see how we can respond to them. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Yeah, there's a good discussion going on there in the Q&A. There's a couple of questions for you, Benjamin. I'll come back to those. There's one also here from Fatima requesting or suggesting, I guess, a regional strategy to handle the issue of food safety. And on this one, I just wanted to bring to your attention that WHO is in the process of developing a global strategy for food safety to take over from the one that expires this year. So that's a process which is ongoing at the global level, but obviously also will have an effect on how we go forward on addressing the food safety issues in our region. So just a little update on that one. I see there were two questions to you Benjamin. I'm sure you have seen them here in the chat. First of all, it's around the software tracing foodborne diseases that you mentioned if that is available. And there's one further down, what scientific data do you see important to develop in the coming years, especially in the view of new food technologies? So maybe over to you Benjamin for this one or these two. Yes, thank you very much, Peter. So coming to the first question, yeah, the software publicly available and I can share the link afterwards with you. I don't have it right now, but there's an official home page of the BFR where you can download the software and use them, there are also advertorials how to use them. Coming to the second question, yeah, a lot of scientific data. So I think from our perspective, at first an important issue to identify emerging risks as soon as possible so that you can handle them in an appropriate way. Regarding food safety, we will need much more data about natural compounds in food stuff as also natural compounds may have toxic properties and according to climate change, plants may produce new toxins in higher amounts than it was in the past. However, we also require epidemiological data. For example, we need data about the food processing itself because new technologies come into play which might have an impact on the food composition and even also in this case that may lead to process in use contaminants and so on. Okay, thank you for that. There has also been a question about foodborne disease and the burden of foodborne diseases and I also wanted here just to update you on the work WHO was doing. Some of the figures that we have referred to earlier during the session today was from the 2015 publication, the WHO estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases, which was then based on 2010 data. So when we talk about these figures today, we have to also recognize that these are 10 years old, but we have started the process of developing updated global estimates for the burden of foodborne diseases and also very recently and actually today at the global event on World Food Safety Day, we'll be launching the tools for estimating national burdens of foodborne diseases. So that might also be of interest to some countries. So that's a tool to help countries go through the exercise themselves using the same terminology and methods that has been used in estimating the global. So work is coming forward here and the new estimates we expect to be published in 2025. Yeah, just to jump in here, there was also a 2018 update where they looked at heavy metal burdens and that added another 10 million dailies to the original 2015 Ari Haveler report. And also, I think it is very conservative. You know, when we look at Greek or Ireland or America or Canada, they find very high levels of foodborne disease. And when you look at the WHO, which I think was absolutely great and really was put food safety in the highlights, but they are very conservative. The levels of foodborne disease in high income countries are like 10 times as much as in low and middle income countries. And I don't think that makes sense. All right. Yeah, thank you, Dalia. And you're absolutely right. The chemical part of the estimates was not so strong in the first edition when it came out in 2015. So that was an update there. And this is also something we're looking into, acknowledging that the methodology to estimate burdens from chemicals is much, much more complex. We are already a little bit over time. And I see there was a question also from Fatima in relation to a coordination body for food safety. As I understand the question, if there is any coordination body for food safety and health. And I'm not quite sure the context of the question, but Codex Elementarius serves as one of these coordination bodies and Nalia talked about it in her intervention. And so at the regional level, the CC Euro can serve that purpose at global level. There is the Codex Elementarius Commission, and there are various other coordination bodies. It was also mentioned in the opening remarks, I think both by Hans and Vladimir that we have launched a regional coordination mechanism for one health in the European Central Asia region. And that obviously also serves as coordination. But I will hand it over to you, Mary, for some concluding remarks before we end the session today. Thank you very much. Thank you, Peter, and to all the panel members for the updates and for the very interesting discussion. We had planned and I will give I think 30 seconds to each of the panel members to give a very short one sentence. What was your what is either your take home message or your key message you'd like to give today on World Food Safety Day or a priority issue that you think is important to work on in our region. So Naila, I'm going to go in this order, Naila, Leon, Tamara and Benjamin, that's the order I see and then Delia. So please, I will ask you to be very concise because we are over the time. And then we will have a final short video as well. Naila, please, your take home message in 30 seconds. Thank you. Thank you, Naila. Leon. Thank you very much, Mary. Well, I think from the COVID-19 and food safety study that we did, I think the positives like increased consumer awareness of hygiene as a part of food safety that they also can contribute to, but also maybe the impacts that government and industry have felt should lead us to better prepare and to be sharing that preparation with others and make sure that our systems do get stronger based on the learnings from this event. Thank you. Thank you, Leon. Tamara, please. Okay. As it's in Naila, I can say focused on animal health and keep eye on the environmental issue in aim to ensure safe food for all of us. Thank you, Tamara. Benjamin. Yes, thank you. As you may already expect, so from the BFR's precision, science, scientific data and scientific evidence should always be involved if we talk about food safety issues and that scientific basis may help to improve food safety, the production of nutrition and sustainable foods in the future. And that's an important topic. Thank you. Thank you, Benjamin. And thanks for all your really practical insights and the experiences from the German context. Celia, please. Yeah, we have 800,000 children who are stunted or suffering from malnutrition. We can't have food security without food safety. That's why I'm part of the UN Food Systems Summit Action Track 1, looking at food safety. Food safety, it was often ignored, it was often treated as something just casual or less than important. And now we're really seeing it in the front here, leading the food security agenda. And so I'm very happy to be part of that. And I'm very happy to be part of you guys because I think you're just, yeah, you're the people who are making it happen. And I'm just so pleased to be part of you. Thank you. Thank you, D. And thanks again for all your support today. I think that's a really key message and links us back to our focus also this year at country level right across our region. There are many national dialogues ongoing as part of the preparation for the UN Food Systems Summit. And this puts the spotlight on many aspects of our food system. But also, we're all, many of us are food safety people, so we're very committed and really see the importance of continuing to work on food safety and ensure that it is a human right and not an extra or a luxury as, yes, can be maybe misunderstood in some ways, but it's really core to health and core to nutritious and our food security. I'm going to conclude now, Peter, and hand back to you for the final, final close, but I just want to, I do want to thank very much WHO for the great collaboration to Peter and his team, but also to our team led by Gotja Akvali, our food safety consultant, and also with Linda Rowland and Olga interpreting. Yeah, thanks. Always a big back room support on these events, as you know, and really, really well job well done. Thank you. Back to you, Peter. Thank you, Mary. And saying from me here, thanks to all the panelists, to all the speakers who contributed to the event today, thanks to FAO and the whole team there for good collaboration. And again, one of these successful regional webinars, it has been a great pleasure working with you. And also thanks to the more than 200 participants who connected to the session today. Thank you so much for all the good questions, the debate, and I wish you all continued happy and healthy World Food Safety Day. It's just over midday here in Copenhagen, so we still have a long day in front of us. The global event starts in about 20 minutes. For those of you who are interested in joining the global event, please log on to that in 20 minutes time. So with that, thanks again, and hope to be in touch and seeing some of you around the region.