 It's time to start. So welcome everyone to our session today titled food safety in the COVID-19 era and beyond. I'm Hank Cardello. I'm a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute where I direct its food policy center. This is a very timely subject when we talk about food safety especially given the tragedy surrounding COVID-19. We've also seen the connections with the food supply system and comorbidities related to the coronavirus pandemic and hunger. All those things do connect. They're not isolated any longer. So today we have an outstanding group of experts with us today to share their knowledge about food safety food security and their deep reservoirs of knowledge in this space. Before we get started, just a couple of housekeeping items. The session is being recorded so you don't have to take as copious notes as you normally might. And then second after we're done with our panelists discussion, we welcome your questions and there's a button down at the bottom of your screens that says Q&A. So kindly submit those questions and we'll try to get to as many of those as we possibly can. Also, if you can, please indicate who the question is for so we can direct it properly. So now what I'd like to do, it's my pleasure to introduce Vimlendra Sharam who will give us an introduction to today's proceedings and tell us a little bit about the interlinkage between the food safety and security with COVID and hunger and world health. Vimlendra is the director and liaison office for North America of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. He has more than two decades of leadership experience focusing on rural development, agriculture and food security issues. Additionally, he served as vice president of the World Food Program Executive Board and chairman of the International Fund for Agricultural Development Evaluation Committee. Welcome Vimlendra, we look forward to your comments. Thank you Hank. Welcome to all the participants who have joined us today for this webinar on food safety in COVID-19 era and beyond. In 1736, Benjamin Franklin addressing the Philadelphians had said, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Though said in the context of the fire that had ravaged Philadelphia then, nothing could be truer about food safety than this. We are not used to ignore food safety only at our own peril. For ignoring it will have a disastrous impact on human health, economic prosperity, food security and sustainable development. Noting that in a world where the food supply chain has become extremely complex and where any adverse food safety incident has global negative effects and food security of the health, trade and economy. The United Nations General Assembly at its 73rd session in 2018 designated 7th June as the World Food Day. Cognizant of the urgent need to raise awareness at all levels and to promote and facilitate actions for global food safety on the basis of scientific principles. Record upon Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO and the World Health Organization to lead efforts in promoting worldwide food safety. As hunger hotspots multiply and hunger numbers rise due to COVID-19 pandemic, food safety issues have come into sharper focus. We all know that there can be no food security without food safety and unsafe food compromises nutrition, which is an essential component of food security. If we intend feeding adequate and nutritious food to the 821 million hungry people, a number which is likely to rise substantially due to the pandemic. And if we intend achieving the SDG2 in foreseeable future, strengthening food safety measures will be of paramount importance. Impact of climate change and today's global food supply chains make food safety landscape more complex and challenging than ever before. New food safety threats are ever emerging. Aflatoxin is a particularly good example, which has wreaked havoc on health and economic well-being especially of the world poor. Sadly for us, food safety management has not kept pace with the emerging challenges. Instead of horizon scanning and foresight, we are still in the reactive mode. Only foresight and knowledge alongside surveillance techniques can help countries keep food safe. It's obvious that unsafe food cannot sustain human health and has tragic social and economic consequences. You all know that unsafe food kills nearly 420,000 people every year. And as DGWHO said, these deaths are entirely preventable. On the economic front, unsafe food is hindering development in many low and middle-income economies, which lose around US$95 billion in productivity losses associated with illness, disability and premature death suffered by workers. These are burdens which the world can ill afford. Improving levels of food safety globally requires collaboration amongst the stakeholders and development of new technologies, sustainable commitments and strengthening of human and institutional capacities. We must remember that food safety is everybody's business. Whether you're a farmer, farm supplier, food processor, transporter, marketer or consumer, food safety is your business. On our part at FAO and WHO, we have focused forces to assist countries in preventing, managing and responding to the risks all along the food supply chain. By working with food vendors, producers, regulatory authorities and civil society, regardless of whether food is domestically produced or imported. We are committed to play a part and we encourage all of you and your organizations to play yours. Speakers of the webinar today will examine efforts to maintain safe supply chains through the pandemic and beyond and explore actions needed to minimize future logistic disruptions and build a more resilient system and processes. I'm confident that the deliberations will be insightful and will leave us with enough food for thought as we join forces to make the food we eat safe and nutritious. Before I hand you back to our moderator Hank, let me give a shout out to my friend JB from Mars Incorporated, who initially came up with this idea of having a webinar to mark the second world food safety day. And on behalf of FAO, I would also like to thank our keynote speaker and other distinguished panelists for agreeing to share their thoughts with us today. Over to you Hank. Thank you, Linda. Appreciate you putting things and framing the circumstances around food safety and food security. And also most important recognizing that we're still in reactive mode and we're here to try to provide insights that ultimately lead to solutions. We'll take a few texts into this opening and our discussion topics. Dr. Stephen Jaffe will now give us a presentation on food safety before and beyond COVID-19. Dr. Jaffe is lecturer at the University of Maryland's Agriculture and Resource Economics Department. He is an expert on food security, food safety, agricultural risk management and agricultural policy. Dr. Jaffe recently produced the Safe Food Imperative, accelerating progress in low and middle income countries. Welcome Steve and thank you for contributing to the session. Good morning. And, and good afternoon and good evening to those in a different time zone. I'm going to share a screen now and I'll walk through the presentation. So the subtitle of this presentation is is flattening the curve on foodborne illness and costs and developing countries. So for many policymakers in developing countries, food safety is really the image on the left. It's food safety is a highly technical issue pursued by specialists. But as most of you on the this webinar know that food safety is really the result of the actions and in actions of many stakeholders operating in very diverse environments and that public policy can influence those food environments as well as the the awareness and capacity and behavior of the food system players. And food safety is certainly more than test results or even managing foodborne illness outbreaks. Food safety is critical to achieving sustainable development goals. It's foundational to realizing goals related to poverty, hunger, and good health and well being and it's integral to quite a few of the other SDGs. Until quite recently, when food safety has been on the development agenda, this has been predominantly in relation to trade and market access concerns. These are much more visible. We see these where trade is restricted or consignments are rejected. And the sort of political economy around this is that on the trade side we tend to have much better organized lead companies and as well as farmers, the costs and impacts are borne by them and they have the they have the ear of policymakers and the the roles in terms of public oversight are actually quite clear. On a domestic side, we don't tend to have consumer organizations in developing countries. The responsibilities on the government side tend to be split between multiple ministries and agencies. And the burden of foodborne illness falls largely on people that don't have a voice, whether this is poor or children. So we have this sort of iceberg phenomenon of the visible impacts trade impacts. And that tends to be the target then of many interventions, especially a development assistance interventions and below the surface or the larger yet often invisible unmeasured domestic impacts. So we're getting more visibility now, both from sort of recent analytical work and on the ground work that FAO WHO and others are doing on the analytical side, the big breakthrough was the 2015 publication of the foodborne disease reference group supported by the WHO. And that's where we're getting these global estimates on foodborne illness of 600 million foodborne related deaths with the vast majority of these occurring in emerging Asia and Africa. And also we're children bearing a disproportionate burden. On the right side, two years ago we came out the World Bank in affiliation with other institutions. We looked at it more from a social science point of view and an economic point of view and we estimated the annual costs to developing countries in terms of productivity loss and or treatment costs of 110 billion dollars. That these costs are very closely linked to sort of a stage or level of development. And that we put the domestic food safety domestic costs of unsafe food at 20 times that of trade related costs and if you in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa, something like 50 times the costs. In in the safe food imperative we we outline what we call food safety life cycle where we're trying to relate the the economic impact of unsafe food to levels of income and the pattern in sort of agro food system transformation. And we asked the question can is this sort of an inevitable trajectory or can countries through to foresight and planning and preventive measures flatten the curve on foodborne illness and its economic impacts. So basically for low income countries which we call sort of traditional food systems. Staple foods starchy staples are the dominant position in the diet food value chains are generally short a lot of self provisioning of food. A lot of the food safety issues derived from unclean water or animals. And generally, the sort of key food issues still for low income countries are availability and affordability capacity of food safety is low but also the effective value of food safety. The demand for safe food is low. The situation changes quite dramatically for lower middle income countries which are the transitioning ones. And here we have rapid urbanization we have rapid dietary change toward animal products fruit and vegetables processed foods, more out of home eating. And so the exposure of the population to a wider set of hazards is potentially there yet capacity is lagging and trying to catch up. Not predominantly informal food distribution systems or fragmented food systems. That together with the lack of hard evidence really has resulted in limited budgetary resources going for regulatory oversight. And at the same time the sort of formal sector private governance is still limited to a small part of the market. Consumers are worried at this stage but have no tools to act on that worry. Things change as we get into the modernizing this yellow part. This is upper middle, upper middle income countries where capacity is catching up to need. And this is because we have a rapid formalization of the food system improved scientific basis public administration. Consumers are now beginning to have a purchasing power that influence moves the market and also they're influencing government regulation. So we we laid out basically a scenario where things would actually get considerably worse for today's low and lower middle income countries. If we were operating in a business as usual scenario, but that this is not inevitable. So what is business as usual for many countries pre COVID was really a lack of a comprehensive national policies priorities and programs in food safety that the capacity was sort of fragmented as well as uncoordinated both between between ministries and between central government and decentralized government investments would tend to happen with projects and not necessarily be linked to one another. Much activity has been sort of more in reactive mode after the outbreaks after the food after the export restrictions. So a lot of firefighting happening rather than preventative measures and on the regulatory side, sort of a method of approach which is sort of seeking out where there's violations non compliance and punishing the violators rather than enabling compliance. So we have a sort of legacy of of the deficit of data of direction of accountability and and of trust and the all of these are now accentuated in the context of COVID. So in terms of underinvestment. Here's this one illustration. So some of the further affiliated researchers have looked more deeply at animal source foods and it looks like these are a major part of the foodborne disease burden greater than 40% in some two thirds of developing countries. And then when we look at the OIE veterinary service assessments about a dozen of their indicators relate very closely to food safety and what we show here is that the distinction between the upper middle income countries which is in the orange and the lower middle and the low income basically for these areas of very small proportion of low income or lower middle income countries have been deemed to have adequate capacity in these dimensions of the veterinary services which are highly related to food safety management and and here we're showing that actually capacity matters and matters a lot and that low investment for developing countries is actually a very costly thing. What we show here is the vertical part is animal source food dailies disability adjusted life years. So this is the burden of unsafe animal products, the illness and premature death, and on the bottom is an index of these capacities of food safety related to animal products and there's a very clear relationship here the countries that have invested have a much lower burden and the countries that haven't have a much higher burden and this is not just related to a higher income some of the countries that have done that are doing rather well are or are either lower lower middle income countries. So moving forward, we advocate consistent with sort of the messaging of FAO and WHO. Really thinking about a model of shared responsibility where the current model is more top down government sets the rules private sector sort of marches to those rules and consumers are largely passive and or angry on social media and not really playing a role. And it's much more about the three segments all playing extremely important integrated roles and much of what government is doing is not only controlling but is facilitating the ability of business and consumers to play their role. So on the right side we have the the inspector offering the carrot rather than the stick so regulatory delivery needs to be a combination of enforcement but also advice and encouragement and and motivators for for vendors and small businesses and and what not in various programs for them to be compliant and not just be the recipients of of fines. So governments need to invest more and more smartly in domestic food safety, very important is the scientific basis, the human capital basis, these are really the foundations to balance hardware with software for example labs but really the protocols and the quality management systems synergies are quite important between food safety and environment food safety and nutrition food safety and animal health and monitoring the impacts more better to be able to calibrate investment. We think in the sort of post coven world that that really the one health approach is going to be need to be strengthened. We have it on paper now and I think the voting more resources and more effort to operationalizing this on the ground is is essential. We do have a roadmap for that two years ago this operational framework was developed in in quite detail about how countries can go about pursuing this which really combines surveillance and oversight and technical support across animal health human health and environmental health and where they intersect. And in addition to government sort of investing more smartly. It's really important to to leverage private initiative and investment and this is in areas of knowledge infrastructure practices conformity assurance. So finally, but basically we we we look to a world of flattening the curve twice. So one is flattening the curve on on the coven pandemic and and and the next is really to the strategies to flatten the curve and foodborne illness and its economic costs. And so going into coven basically the the situation was food safety awareness and capacities were highly underdeveloped in many developing countries. Vulnerability we saw is especially high for lower middle income countries given the rapid change happening demographically and dietary and that the panic pandemic is certainly accentuated these weaknesses. So countries coming out of the pandemic need to strengthen the foundations for the for coherent food safety and one health systems, as well as build back better the infrastructure and supply chain relationships. Thank you very much you can see if you go to this website, you can find the report that I just referred to. Thank you. Thank you so much Steve. What great insights as a cornerstone for our discussion today. And what I'd like to do before we move on I have a quick question for you, you know, in your charts you showed quite a bit of diversity across developing countries, and it really suggests that a one size fits all really won't work as we try to approach. What's called practical solutions to this. Do you have any suggestions for your colleagues as to how they might approach this on the food safety system. Yeah. Okay, so, look, we, we, we have a number of sort of key principles that we think should be applying across countries the shared responsibility, being preventive oriented applying risk based principles and whatnot. All right, so that's okay that's your start but then you each country should be doing its diagnostic current situation where the where the hotspots are where the pressures are and sort of develop sort of a realistic scenario and maybe this is a five to 10 year orientation of how stepwise countries are going to advance this agenda and WHO in the regional strategies that it supports often is, is, is, is, is, is dealing in sort of the same language of a stepwise approach so we look at that in, in say food and narrative we broke it down by these different stages and we looked at, we looked at risk assessment risk management communications and for each sort of step, what might be a greater prior priorities for such such countries, and as you sort of move through that clearly you're going from maybe more qualitative to more quantitative from more sort of pilot initiatives to more mainstreaming from, you know, narrowing in on certain hotspots to later on having just more, more systematic collection of data that gives you the bigger picture so what, what is feasible from a policy and a technical point of view for low income countries, it will be different for countries moving forward so having a sort of a five to 10 year stepwise strategy is sort of what we, we, we advocate and we laid out some specifics but this is really something that is best done at a country level facilitated with multiple stakeholders. All right, thank you Steve and thank you so much for providing this background to our discussion today. And now it's time for our panelists to join the conversation. Our first panelist is Dr napko Yamamoto who's the assistant director general for universal health coverage and healthier populations at the World Health Organization. Dr Yamamoto brings nearly 30 years of experience in health in Japan, where she served as senior assistant minister of global health for that country and she's organized international conferences on universal health coverage in 2015. And also she has been a proponent for the promotion of universal health coverage. So, welcome, Dr Yamamoto and we look forward to your comments. Thank you Hank and thank you very much give me opportunity to join this webinar. So, let me start I cannot agree more emphasize more what Steve said that in his lecture that the foodborne disease have a significant impact on public health. And also the food safety is a key to achieve SDG goal. He mentioned several goals related to food safety. So in my intervention, I would like to say three issues. First, vision of the global food safety strategy. As the WTO Executive Board meeting DCI in February, member states has a resolution named the strength and effort on food safety. It is a resolution and those members state asked WTO to come up to global food safety strategy. That's exactly same understanding and the concern from the members as Steve exactly said that is his lecture. So member states asked WTO to four main issues. They request them create new WTO global strategy for food safety in coordination with FAO and in consultation with member states and OIE. Second issues is create the coordination and continue to coordination mechanism with FAOs and WTO's strategic effort on this area. Third area is update global burden of foodborne disease report by 2025. Steve mentioned about the data was 600 million people illness and that data is 2015 and we need update. And also continue to leadership and partnership with FAO and other partners codex elementarium infosum. It is international food safety authorities network or food safety infrastructure, new technology and respond to the emerging risk. This is a request from the member states and our vision of the strategy is provide safe and healthy food for all and protect consumers health by strengthen national food safety system, national level is the most important. This is our issues and we are going to work together all partners. So we if you have time we would like to continue the discussion later. Second issues is nutrition food system during COVID-19. Again, the previous speaker has already mentioned about the impact, negative impact of COVID-19 in this area. And also Tuesday UN secretary general launched a policy brief on the impact of COVID-19 or food security and nutrition. In the brief paper, he mentioned about the huge impact of the nutrition and food security issues in the world. And WHO is going to work with UNICEF, FAO and WFP to launch a call to action to address this crisis soon. And of course we talk about we need this COVID impact many people like food factory, local markets, supply chain and so on. So WHO is issues several documents and guidance, for example, like how to deal with COVID-19 and food safety and food businesses. Or and we issues a document provide advice and recommendations of national food safety authorities to optimize food control function and prioritize their action because many issues happen in COVID. Third issues, I would like to talk about post COVID-19. Steve, a previous speaker has already mentioned about recover better or create better world in terms of COVID-19, post COVID-19. But addition to Steve said that I would like to add another one. The policy review UNISG mentioned urgent need to transform the world food system. So food system contributes the green gas emission and also contributes substantial biodiversity loss. So this is urgent need to rethink how we produce process and market and the consumer food and dispose of the waste. So COVID-19 will give us some opportunity to the balance and transform our food system more inclusive, sustainable, resilient and make safer and healthier the people. So we have several opportunities to discuss about it. For example, like a nutrition summit hosted by Japanese government is planned to 2020 but to go to the 21st 2021 because of the COVID-19 but they call the member state or partner to commit the financial policy commitment this area. And also we have facing the new debut year of the decade of action nutrition. This is a big opportunity to discuss about food safety and nutrition. And in 2021 UN Secretary General has also convened a food system summit and we are going to discuss about how to reshape food system to be more secure and healthier. So there are many several opportunities all of us to discuss our food safety issue. So food safety is like a everybody business and I'm looking for to discuss further with all of you. So thank you very much. Thank you now come a quick question for you. How is the WHO organizing scientific advice for food safety and nutrition. Thank you your question. We just follow we have a codex elementarium and we have many scientists board. Of course, previously we have a face to face meeting now we are everything down by budget way but it works well well. And so we have a some group of the pesticide residue or micro or micro bio risk or nutrition and diet and many issues in on top of it. As we mentioned in my speech we have an infosum so information group was the next group and do maybe we need to create some good group additional group for to discuss global food safety strategy. So we will continue and also enhance our work with all experts in the world to come up with these issues because there are many interlinks area and also multi sectors approach should be important. And not only the expert as Steve said that we need to some engagement of consumer or public people or civil society people to work together with us including private sector. So thank you very much your question. Thank you for that. And I'm going to move things along I have so many questions I'd love to ask all the panelists but I'd also like to lead plenty of time for our audience to be able to chime in with questions. So thank you so much for those insights. And I'd like to now introduce our next panelist. He is Dave Kreen who's vice president of corporate R&D and the chief science office at Mars Incorporated Dave brings over 30 years experience in food safety and he leads both quality and food safety at Mars. He's spoken extensively about food safety food security and the critical role of multi stakeholder collaboration. He does represent the company with organizations such as the National Academy of Sciences and the World Health Organization and who bring an industry perspective to this conversation. So hello David, my pleasure. Please go. Thank you Hank and it's an absolute privilege to be here today. I'd just like to start off by saying that I think we all have in our thoughts the millions suffering with COVID-19. Those who have passed those who have experienced economic consequences due to job losses and the many more families and communities who will likely face greater food insecurity and malnutrition hardships. We stand in solidarity with everyone seeking a better world tomorrow, grounded in the fundamental human right of access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. At Mars, we believe everyone has the right to safe food. We see food safety as pre competitive and we believe we have a responsibility to collaborate and share our insights, experience and knowledge. While recognizing that no single organization can tackle global food safety challenges alone. We cannot underestimate the significant food security and food safety challenges brought by COVID-19. What we're hearing is that the virus is converging and potentially accelerating global food supply issues. Hunger and COVID-19 are a deadly combination. The World Food Program estimates that the global pandemic could mean extreme hunger for up to 265 million people this year, twice the number who were already suffering from acute hunger before COVID-19. This is a devastating situation, which WFP leader David Beasley has referred to as a problem of biblical proportions. It's the most vulnerable who are impacted the most. Generally, in the broad of global food supply, I think many of us are seeing what I can summarize with one word is instability, interruption of supply, changes, sudden changes in buying behavior, logistics difficulties and unpredictability. These issues combine to challenge the effectiveness of our supply chains today and into the future. Instability is exacerbated by difficulties in moving materials across borders, lack of additional capacity in the system, for example, insufficient storage facilities. Key supply workers unable to work because of the risk to them, their families or unsafe working conditions due to not being able to socially distance. Breakdown of process and planning. Business process thrives on stability. If things aren't predictable, it's very difficult to plan. Pricing volatility, rendering operations financially unsustainable and very worrying for me. These conditions are all ideal conditions for increasing the threat of food fraud and adulteration. The ability to respond to and mitigate these challenges often exists in developed countries, but in developing countries where resources are more scarce, these challenges may become critical failures. COVID-19 provides a stark reminder about the fragility and importance of food supply chains across the world, especially in developing countries. We have a responsibility to learn from this crisis. Learn quickly so we can manage the current impact of the COVID-19 crisis on food supply chains today. Learn deeply and fundamentally so we can ensure we capture and apply insights to increase food supply chain resilience ahead of future crises. And leverage that learning so that we can better address existing challenges like food safety and food security. The Edelman Trust Barometer special report on the COVID-19 crisis showed that 70% of respondents believe that business is a critical ingredient of defence against the virus. Recently, David Nabarro has encouraged business to be a role model and partner with authorities on pre-competitive collaborative initiatives to help make systems more shock resilient, help make food and medical supply chains resilient, and do what business does best, respond fast. In a crisis, the pace of innovation often increases. Necessity is the mother of invention. In addressing COVID-19, we have seen unprecedented pace and focus. The speed of research, the rate of information sharing, and I'm astounded to see that we have 60 vaccines going into clinical trials by the end of the year. We've seen the power of new technologies such as whole genome sequencing. We've seen the power of global and rapidly forming global integrated collaborations by business, governments, universities and aid agencies. These are lessons that we can take forward and in closing, I would like to emphasise the following key challenges that must be addressed. Timely and transparent collaboration is essential. We must redouble our efforts in food safety with pace and focus. We must work as a coalition of regulators, NGOs, universities and industry to share food safety research information much faster. Our goal is clear. We must ensure safe food for everyone. Thank you Hank. Thank you Dave. One of my key takeaways was the word instability sticks out to me and you reference potentially the advantages of partnering between industry, the private sector and non-private sector. How can we address this and come up with real world solutions that work both for industry but also most importantly for the public health? I think when I talk Hank about food safety being pre-competitive, I think what we've got to recognise is if you're in business, you need your products to be safe. If consumers won't trust brands that aren't safe, if you want to build your business, you've got to develop that trust with the consumer. Safe food is key in all of that and therefore being able to share the approach to food safety so that all parts of the food supply chain are impacted. You're actually raising the water level for everybody and all boats float on the high tide. The argument to do this from a business point of view I think is pretty clear. I think the challenge is how do we organise so that we can collaborate effectively and meaningfully. It's a massive challenge and we haven't always got the right resources in place. One of the things we've done at Mars is we've recognised that research is critical and we've invested in a global food safety centre that we opened in 2015 just outside Beijing in China. And being able to publish that research, share the learnings that we have and also bring people into connect to partner and also for training is proving to be massively beneficial. But it's a small thing. It's a small thing that's important but we need to replicate that model I think around the world. Thank you so much Dave. We really appreciate those insights and comments. Our next panelist is Vincent Dumizel. Vincent brings a different type of experience to this panel. He has 20 years experience in food testing, inspection and certification. He now leads the charitable objectives of the Lloyds Register Foundation by funding innovative projects to drive safety in the food supply chain. Partnering with groups like the UN Global Compact, the FAO, the World Bank and other NGOs. They are concentrating right now on food safety with the objective to contribute to enable a safe and sustainable food supply to feed the world. Not only for today but looking forward to tomorrow. So welcome Vincent. We look forward to your input. Thank you very much and first I would like to thank FAO for the invitation and thank all of you for joining this session. The Lloyds Register Group indeed is born in 1760. So we are obviously not the most famous nor the biggest organization in here but quite most likely the oldest one. So we know what resilience means and there are a few lessons we learned from these 260 years of experience. So these lessons were well demonstrated during the COVID-19. First, when talking about COVID-19, key learning is that food supply chain is a critical infrastructure. And in many countries, food and health organizations were the only ones left to operate. So being a leader in verification and assurance, of course, we are well known for shipping but we are also active in all types of sectors. And a leader in food safety verification delivering audits to many of the global brands including math, by the way. So during COVID-19, our operations to monitor safety and compliance have been stopped because it was impossible to go on site and to verify. That was a big deal for most of our clients who were about to lose their license to operate and it did create some big troubles in addition to the COVID-19 problem. So that is obviously a real issue for food safety because then you cannot make sure that the food is on place and that the food you produce is safe. In that crisis, it is to be noted that many of the sector were quite advanced in digital enabled solutions for remote audit using new technology and big data to ensure that the process were in place. It was made also clear that food was lagging behind in that aspect. We've seen a lot of pushback from regulators and standards to authorize remote assessment for food. While it was authorized and most of the time already piloted in other less critical sectors such as automotive energy aeronautics. There's no need to put the blame on anyone for these are some very good reasons for this very cautious move. I risk involve a lack of investment historically due to low margin input and a very small fragmented and highly complex supply chain. Still, it made clear that we need to accelerate on digitalization for food safety controls and leverage on new technology to make sure that food is safe instead of relying only on spotted and simple onsite exercise. Pollution are existing today. We need to enable this solution and improve transparency and safety all along the supply chain with this new solution. There's a second topic of interest in relation to COVID-19 and totally different topic that is investigated right now by the Lloyd Fujisawa Foundation, indeed a charity and the soul shareholder of the Lloyd Fujisawa Group, which is a lack of transparency and the food security question. Back on COVID-19 we have to be cautious as there is no scientific evidence yet it is likely that COVID-19 is a food safety issue and originates from animal infection coming from illegal white meat, whatever it is in the end. Some say that the trend for illegal white meat is due to a protein gap following the floatering of 300 million porks in China during the swine flu a week last year. So Moses says that it has been generated by cultivation move to new wild area where people are to face new type of virus and animal, whatever is the reason in the end. It shows that the system relying only on land production, providing the current growth of population and protein demand is impossible and will generate traceability and food safety major issues. The complete dependence on land production, in addition to that growing difference between a few rich people and billions of people starving to death is not only a shame for our civilization but it's a time bomb for all of us. We need to rely on new type of food and not only food from the ocean. Our organization, Lloyd's Register is born around the ocean business and for almost 300 years we learned that ocean is key to any resilient solution to any resilient business. We moved from prey story to modern human being 12,000 years ago when we stopped being hunters gatherers to move to agriculture and livestock feeding million of people at this time with safe food. We never did that with the ocean, while the ocean cover 70% of our planet and contribute today to less than 2% of our calorie supply. Well, so in that aspect we are just starting to farm food from the ocean for the last 50 years or so, and we do that in a very unsustainable way. And we know that because we are very active in that sector. In addition, we are impaired in that growth of food from the ocean by the lack of appropriate and related food safety regulation. Hence, we developed recently and launched last week with UN Global Compact FAO World Bank WWF, the Nature Conservancy, many private brands and many others, a strategy to improve aquaculture and notably the use of seaweeds, that holds great potential to provide directly or indirectly safe, very healthy and sustainable food to everyone on the planet. So you can check that and join us on the website www.cbdmanifesto.com to know more about that ambition www.cbdmanifesto.com. And I think, I mean, just as a conclusion, I think despite crises such as COVID-19, if we both manage to rely on new technology for food safety and transparency monitoring on one hand and develop new source of food while restoring abundance in the ocean. We may be remembered as the first generation on this planet who manage to provide safe and sustainable food to everyone. We could be remembered as such. And I think we will. Thank you. Thank you, Vincent. And, you know, you mentioned remote monitoring of the food safety system. What's still missing? How do we, how do we accelerate that to even be more impactful? That's a very good question. Thanks. There's two different types of things that are missing. One is a global database that holds information for the entire food safety. Once again, it's very complex. It's very fragmented. It's a very international supply chain. But we need to have multiple or several databases with the global information on that. And so we can enable trustability and we can have access to each and every food producer and food manufacturers and so forth and track this entire supply chain. That's one thing. And a lot of innovation blockchain being the most 21 could enable that type of solution. The second thing, the type of thing that we need to enable is where to aggregate the big data that we have on the food supply chain and make it available for food verifiers, basically. And also, there's a missing link somehow that we are actively working on at the moment, which is the Fiji tool because blockchain may be very active for an efficient for insurance or currencies. But food is a perishable asset that can be substituted. So we need to make sure that there's new type of, we need a new marker. We need new generation of markers. Could be DNA markers, could be microbiome footprint, could be isotopes, stabilized isotopes, whatever it is. But we need to enable the connection between the digital record and the real food. I think that's what is missing. But once again, innovation, just like your smartphone is not just only a protocol, an internet protocol. It is aggregation of many innovation. So there will be a lot of, there are, there is actually a lot of innovation that are coming together. And more importantly, what we need in the food supply chain to make this, to make it happen is to work together. It can only happen if we are all together. All right. Thank you so much, Vincent. Very unique perspectives to the conversation. Our final panelist is Dr. Jeff Lujun. Jeff is the food safety and quality officer for FAO. He is an expert on pathogen contamination of food. Jeff was previously with Ohio State University where he was professor of food safety and the program head at the food animal health research program for that institution. Jeff Wolfman, we look forward to hearing from you. Thank you. I'm pleased to be here and thank you all for staying tuned to this interesting conversation. I'll keep my comments a bit brief so we have adequate time for discussion, but I wanted to harken back a little bit to the introductory remarks about food security. In terms of food security, we can think of it as being a pillar of having adequate access nutrition and safe food. However, those aren't independent pillars. They're all interactive and interconnected. For example, we all understand the disruptions in our food supply. And if people can't get food, they can't get nutrition. So then that pillar kind of collapses under the current conditions. The current major crisis that we're facing right now is some interruption in that the access to food or disruptions in the food supply, either due to illnesses of agricultural workers, because of unsafe working conditions, or even the absence of supplies, supply chain management where people cannot get seeds, cannot get fertilizer, and not ship their products to market, which interrupts. So there's adequate food, but it's getting it to the people, which results in a food security issue. The last pillar I wanted to talk about is the food safety. Now, there is no evidence and I think this was mentioned that animals, livestock food producing animals are carriers of the virus that causes the COVID-19. And there have been no implications of who that's in the market to cause the disease for illness and people. Okay, so our food supply when available is safe with respect to the virus causing the disease. Nevertheless, it's still critically important. I don't know how much I can underscore the statement that we maintain those controls in place to keep our food supply safe. That is the personal hygiene and the environmental sanitation throughout the food chain. These principles are well documented and can be found, for example, in Codex Alimentarius documents on best practices for general principles for food hygiene or the control of viruses and meat. So it is important to keep viruses and other pathogens out of the food supply. In fact, and this number came up before 600 million people fall ill to foodborne illnesses. Okay, and we all understand the impact of the health impact of COVID-19 on people and the taxation that's putting on our public health system. So the last thing we need right now is more foodborne illnesses to kind of further tax the health system. So if we can prevent foodborne illnesses that are out there and prevent new ones, we can better accommodate and cope with the current situation. So the last point I wanted to make, it deals with what lessons we have learned. What do we go to and where can we come from? So during this current outbreak, a pandemic, if you will, we're learning a lot of things about the vulnerabilities and weaknesses in our food system. Okay, I would like to call it more of a food system than a chain because it's not a direct linear connection of point A to B. And if we act in one location, it could have direct or indirect facts in another point within our food system. So as we identify these weaknesses and vulnerabilities, that's important and it's important because we can take those looking at the other side of the coin and say these are areas where we can work to intervene to strengthen our food supply in the future. So it's a take home message of where we can improve so we can help prevent the next pandemic. And it's important that we document these, take notes of them, and base our interventions and strategies on science. We're not on myths, hearsay and fear, but on something that we can potentially document and validate as validated and effective control measures to prevent the transmission of an organism like this in our food chain. So with that, I think I'll close and move on to the discussion period. Thank you very much. Jeff, quick question for you. From a microbiologist perspective, how is this pandemic different than previous ones. Yeah, that's it. Thanks for asking that because we haven't really discussed much about the, the microbiology of the current pandemic and as a microbiologist we think often as a disease outcome is being interaction between the host or the human population, the environment which we've talked quite a bit about the food production chain food projection system, and the third component of that interaction is either infectious agent. So here we're talking about the, the SARS coronavirus to variant that's there. The virus itself binds to cells that line the airways of humans, say in the in the mouth and in the lungs and also in the nose and there's some receptors also in the gastrointestinal tract. Now the receptors that other animals have are different than those of humans and there's some similarities and we can and this receptor binding kind of kind of defines the host range. So, we can see some infection and cats and ferrets experimentally and we had some outbreak and mink, but fortunately, in this case and I say that we're fortunate and I mean, what we see is horrific in terms of the human toll on illnesses and death, but it has shown up in food producing animal populations, probably because of this difference in receptor binding. And so it keeps it out of our food chain. And it means one less area that we have to concern ourselves about the transmission in the food but we have to worry about contamination from outside sources, not from endogenous. And that would be one aspect I think my microbiological standpoint that really differentiates this from other outbreaks that we've had and may not be different for the next one that emerges in our society. Yeah, great perspective. Thank you. Well, what I'd like to do is move into the audience's questions for the panelists. This first one looks like it's for Dave. I'll read it directly. Big companies have a history of using lip service to investment in capacity development and supporting academia research and producers. Well, post COVID change the capitalist agenda and secure conscious capitalism. Obviously, there's a point of view there. Yeah. I think there's been a lot of discussion around the value of privately sponsored research. And I really resonate with what Jeff was just saying about the interventions that we need to make for the future of food security really need to be based on excellent research that's been rigorously rigorously reviewed. And I think if you're thinking about, you know, what can we do in terms of making sure that we improve the food supply. So what's the contribution that business can make? We've got millions of man hours of experience of how to make products. We've got millions of man hours of experience of how to work with suppliers of how to work with customers of how to preserve quality of how to handle difficult situations. And so if we can find the right way of sharing that experience and also through that experience identify where are the right areas that we should be researching for the future. I believe that's a very open, a very transparent and a very honest contribution to make. I said before that, you know, we've opened up a global food safety center and although we've got bricks and mortar building, we've also got a very exciting network of collaborators. We've got a very clear science policy. And whatever the study is, whatever we do, we publish the results, whether they're good or they're bad. And we're asking questions, not because we want to influence the outcome, but because we want to know the answer. We want to share that data and through sharing that data, we can make the food supply chain safer and more sustainable. We don't get this right. And, you know, it was nice to hear Vincent talk about can we be the first generation to actually solve sustainability in a food supply sense. If we don't get this right, we won't have food supply. We won't have enough food of the right quality to feed the burgeoning population that's going to that that's happening on the planet today. I think this is a challenge that unites us all. I think it's a challenge where industry needs to be transparent. And I think industry needs to deliver very high quality information data and participate in the best research. The key for me is that we need trust, and we need the right collaborations. Trust comes from, I think, transparency, openness and consistency. And that's what we need to be. And I think, you know, from speaking for the business, I can't speak for all business I can speak for my business. I know that my shareholders, my key stakeholders are focused on ensuring that we'll have a business not only today but tomorrow. And to do that we need sustainable food supplies and food safety food security is a key part of ensuring that. And so I hope that goes some way to to answering the question. Right, I do think it goes a long way and actually I'd like to build on that because there are companies like Mars, who have stepped up. I mean there is a sustainable food policy align alliance, which includes Mars and companies like Unilever and Danone, that have stepped up that say this is important and they actually walk their talk. They're actually doing things in this arena, because it's not only the right thing to do. It's good for their consumers and oh by the way we've learned that it's also good for business. So we see this interesting confluence, which we haven't seen over the past few decades where now the timing is right for all these actions. And I think Dave could not have said it better because I do see companies stepping up, not all, but companies like Mars certainly are. Let me move to other questions. Here's one and I it doesn't have any person charged with this but I'll throw it out there according to FAO strategy. What about the food safety related to edible insects, especially in Africa. Any policies there are insights on that. Someone want to step up on that. I guess I can. Can you hear me. I chime in here, but it has been brought to our attention that people are moving. Well, let's just say insects have been consumed for millennia by people around the globe, more in certain cultures than in others. People are looking at edible insects as a potential source of a protein that could potentially be harvested and grown intensively as a alternate protein source. And so it is on our radar. We are kind of exploring and again, I think what we need to be doing is from a scientific approach, gathering that data, looking at it, and making assessments again based on the science that's out there. There are some risk associated but there's also benefits. So, as a risk assessor, I think FAO can continue to evaluate that process and then countries through say for example the Codex element areas process. If they're interested can develop the standards which they think are justified based on the evidence of science. Thank you Jeff. Here's another question. What role in its significance do you see controlled environment agriculture like aquaponics playing as a solution to the issues that have been identified today. Anyone want to take a stab at that. Yes, please. Yeah, well, we see on that was a part of what I explained the future of aquaculture around multiple integration of multi trophic indeed and aquaponics being one of them. Clearly, there's a lot of challenge to that in open sea and in the ocean. I think that we need to understand better indeed the interaction. We have relied way too much on monoculture over the last 12,000 years. And I think we need to understand the interaction between different culture and it's even more important in the ocean. And I think that it goes beyond sustainability somehow in the ocean we are we need to talk about restoration but because we are the first generation to know that there's a big biodiversity loss that is taking place right now. And if we don't do it right, not only will produce less food, but but we will lose a lot of biodiversity in the ocean and online so we are beyond sustainability. I think was a world thing that the sustainability is a 20th century world we are beyond that know we are into restoration, we need to restore the environment we need to restore this ecosystem to produce more food and to restore abundance, be it on land or in the ocean. This kind of very well controlled environment very carefully monitor environment absolutely keep to restore that abundance in ocean and online. All right, thank you Vincent question here on genetics. Sorry, I'd like to know if any steps have been taken at the genetic level for food safety mainly for this pandemic. Anyone have any opinions on that. Jeff, is that something you have some thoughts on. I guess I am not quite sure in terms of the question I mean, I mentioned disease outcomes are a result of the host the human so we're talking about human genetics or we're talking about the genetics of the virus. So there's an interplay between two things there that that could actually potentially, I haven't read papers on host susceptibility to the virus, but we do know that there is a massive sequencing kind of program underway to track this virus to see how it's been spread and how it's slowly changing a little bit over time. But other than that I don't have any comments. Okay. Let me move to the next question we heard a lot about sustainable food systems these days but I was wondering what does it mean for low and middle income countries with this concept be too ambitious. For countries, especially those that still have many shortages in food safety systems. Well, I may say well, once again coming back to to my seaweed. I just wonder how come 99.5% of seaweed cultivation cultivation occurs in in in Asia day so 99.5 so it's almost 100% of the cultivation of seaweed occurs in Asia. There are only one region in the world has learned to cultivate a resource that does not need land, freshwater, they do not need any chemical, they do not need any investment it's a very very low capex cultivation culture. So the question is no I mean I think I think we could we should think out of the box and find new solution but there should be very sustainable solution available to the poor people. And by the way, in the manifesto it is stated that one of the and that's why the World Bank is very interested into it. The new culture are seen as a way to alleviate poverty in the world and even because of out of experience in Africa and Southeast Asia we think that women were benefiting from this new source of revenue so it's also a source of gender equity possibly. So I think we should we should not see the new solution as more expensive than the existing one. Question for now go. Is the WHO going to update the figures of the burden of foodborne diseases. Thank you the question. The previous number I mean we mentioned the three 600 million people they had the illness of the foodborne diseases that is come from the WHO report 2015. And I introduced the resolution of the members said to the WHO they ask us I mean ask the WHO to revise the data or new data by 2025. I think we are going to work with our colleagues to come up some new data to estimate the foodborne burden, but foodborne disease burden. But most important things several speakers already mentioned but data how to measure the foodborne disease burden, how each country has a good capacity to monitor and measure it. So as a bridge over together with our other partners with academia, we need to come up a good indicator, first of all, if you see the SGG sustainable development goal, each goal has some indicator who can use to measure. But for the foodborne diseases, they are, I should say very few or like a direct indicator we don't have a direct indicator. We would like to work together with all academia that people to come up with a good indicator, but at the same time, we need some good monitoring system in the in the country. But yes, we are going to devise it because burden is huge. So thank you, your question. Thank you. Here's another one. COVID-19 appears to be associated with diet related chronic disease, such as obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. Do you expect progress in diet related disease prevention or mitigation? Okay, so let me say that way because because of the several data show that they are hardest group, I should say, the disease symptoms getting worse in the group of the obesity or NCD and non-communicable diseases and these people. We ensure that COVID-19 mitigate the risk of the NCD. We hope that we COVID-19 is able to have a trigger or engine to review our healthy diet. But as we discussed here, we also concern not only the chronic impact, but we really concerned about and facing a challenge about food security issues. In the world, David has already said that before the COVID, we have to 820 million people are hunger and many children is a more 100, more than one, nearly 150 million children under age five are stunted. And these numbers getting worse because of the COVID-19 and food supply. So we need to tackle diet issues together with chronic disease as well, I think. All right. Thank you so much. Here's another question for the group. So can we get a view on donated food? It should remain safe and because it originally originates from most likely safe food sources, we assume the food is still safe at the point of consumption. How do we assure safety in the informal sector and with the current food shortages and food donation drives? What experiences can we learn from the UN and disaster management? Let me ask Dave to chime in on the first half of that question. Yeah, thanks, Hank. I think, you know, depending on the, you know, there's a piece of risk assessment work that needs to be done here and I think it all depends on the food. So if it's kind of shelf stable, canned things, ambient stable products like pasta, dry rice, those sorts of things. And once they're made, they're pretty robust and provided. They're stored in reasonable conditions. They're not going to create much of a food safety issue. And if they're being donated to food banks and that sort of thing or donated to organizations who are going to distribute them, I think you can do that reasonably safely. I think we've got to be a little bit more careful when it comes to things with short shelf life and things that are higher risk. So meat based products, dairy based products, those sorts of things, we've got to be a lot more careful about. And I think, you know, when we're thinking about donating, when we're thinking about making these contributions, I don't think we can assume that it's coming from a safe place or that it's always going to be safe. And so there's a balance here between making sure we can maximize availability, but also have a basic level of due diligence, if you like, to make sure that what we're actually distributing is safe. And as I say, I think coming back to, you know, a basic good piece of risk assessment work could help support those groups in that activity. Just building on your response there, it seems to me that we have a lot of disparate pieces playing here. We have the manufacturers, we have those who distribute the foods. We have restaurants, we have food banks, we have agriculture itself. I mean, they're turning over, you know, destroying vegetables, they're dropping, they're flushing fresh milk down drains. People can't get food who need it. It just seems like we're not in sync. We're not in alignment, even though at least in America and in North America, we have an abundance of food. It just seems that it's all the parts aren't talking to each other. Do you have a point of view on that? Yeah, and I think it comes back to what I was talking about before. When you introduce instability or uncertainty into the food supply system, you know, I always think of it as a system of gears that are finally intermeshed. And when you get little bits of instability, they don't mesh anymore. And so all of a sudden you're left with products that nobody wants. You know, if you're producing milk and that's primarily going to large cafeterias on university campuses, and all of a sudden that's not there anymore. It's very difficult to switch the cows off. You know, you're still going to be producing the milk and where's it going to go. You know, perhaps in time you can say, okay, well perhaps some of that could become other dairy products, cheese, yogurt, those sorts of things, but you can't just flick a switch and make those changes. And so I think, you know, these are exceptional times, exceptional situations going on. There is more that we could do and I think with better coordination with with with better data and better information about, you know, who needs what where and when. Before we, you know, in answer to the question, could we do better, of course, and perhaps finding a way to kind of build a joint capability between the different sectors that you mentioned would help us help us to do that. Yeah, thank you for your candor on that it's a tough issue. I know not only for manufacturers but the entire food system. This is the question that I think our folks from FAO and the WHO might be able to help us with. How can we communicate to governments the importance of food safety when there are so many competing priorities in the region, or has COVID-19 actually raised the profile of food safety. And can we exploit that. Jeff, you want to tackle that from an FAO perspective. Sure, I'll give it a go. Indeed, I think one of our major priorities is food safety in terms of food security and without say food there's no food security. How we get that message across, I think is through webinars like this, and through other outlets and discussions with countries. I think that the COVID-19 has actually raised the profile of the whole food system in general. I think our upcoming food system summit will address some of that and inclusive of food safety. I think putting it up front and prioritizing that as a integral part of other components. Food safety is integral to food sustainability. Food safety is integral to water and environmental health. It's a one health approach that we need to push forward and and get as many people on board to spread the message if you will, that it is critical and looking at the numbers. The number of foodborne illnesses is we mentioned 600 million a year that is is similar to about the number of two and a half times the number of malaria cases that occur annually. However, we do seem to fall off the radar a little bit and the issue is that these are preventable illnesses that we need to highlight and bring to attention, and we can make a big impact on health around the globe. All right. Thank you, Jeff. Now, Ko, do you have any thoughts on that from the WHO perspective? Yes. Maybe this is, thank you very much for this question and this point. I personally say that I also face the same problem. At WHO, of course, my position is that food safety is important, but also health sector and minister of health, they have many other issues, diseases, health care services, injury, NCD, non-communicable disease, maternal health, so on. Fun. So the prioritization or mainstreaming of food safety, food system issues in the health sector is the most important point and political commitment, very important and very necessary. But I am always optimistic because economic growth, as I see Steve show that some graph, the transition graph, many countries right now entering from the transition to transition or modernizing. Then the many countries recognize that food system, food safety and nutritious food is very important in the society, not only the health sector, I would like to work with other colleagues to use this opportunity to create a good trigger to work for it. And this is also the testimony from the members that they recognizing. That's why they come up with the resolution I said to my speech, so I hope we can do more. Thank you. Thank you so much. Hank, can I come in on this one? Yes, please. This is Steve. So I think the profile will be raised, but really the issue is what the governments do with that. Because budgets are going to be highly strained right now. And so food safety will now be competing with even heavier demands from elsewhere in the economy. The easy solution right now it looks to be to work to crack down on the informal sector, right? So that seems to be, first we're going to see live animal markets be restrained. And then the question is what's going to happen with traditional food markets, which actually feed the majority of the population in most developing country cities. So there's actually a massive challenge now about how do you reinvent rather than crush the traditional market systems. What resources is government going to use to do that, because then, if you're if you're not going to commit resources and you're basically going to commit a police force. And you're going to sweep away the street vendors, and you're going to shut down the traditional markets. That doesn't cost you very much. And your budget constraint and that seems to be a solution because it helps social distance and whatnot but basically it's going to result in a a very severe adverse impact on people's access to affordable nutritious foods. So I do think the messaging as we engage with governments on the with this increased recognition this is this is actually a critical turning point to what's going to be the trajectory now of of of perishable food markets and what course it's going to take. It could take a very bad course in my mind. If we're not careful about the messaging and the advice and and presenting workable solutions that you can have strong remnants of the traditional market system but in a more hygienic and environmentally benign way because this I think is is on the minds of policymakers now look the the light markets are people's preference it actually people prefer to buy in that way. But and I'm not talking exotic animals. I'm talking chickens and fish and whatnot. So look moving to chilled systems is definitely going to work in terms of improved food safety but it's going to work at the expense of nutrition of the poor. So it's a trade off and it's a balancing act. And I and I think this is where we're going to have it's going to be difficult conversation with with governments on how to how to deploy and redeploy resources to have an inclusive food system and include in addition to being a safer one. Can I chime in on this to please go ahead. Yeah, at the risk of being a little bit maybe controversial with Steve's comments. I don't know that we have to compartmentalize this and it's trade off trade off. There's a potential for someone of a win win situation here. If we fully integrate food safety principles with the other principles in terms of disease transmission principles. Again, this is a somewhat of an narrower view of the system, but there is opportunity to take those resources that are going to be invested in say COVID and kind of dual use the proper information and the transmission to build on food safety so it's an opportunity to enhance the communication and build and strengthen food safety systems, recognizing that there's still one pie of money. But I think we this is how we need to take advantage of the system to enhance the safety. Yeah, thank you Jeff. Thank you Steve for the comments on this to what a what an outstanding panel. And I'd like to bring in Barbara Stinson to wrap things up and provide her perspectives and thinking about today and our key takeaways. Barbara is the president of the World Food Prize Foundation. She's only the second president of this organization since it was established in 1986. She previously was co founder and senior partner of the Meridian Institute, which is very renowned nonprofit organization that guides collaboration and drives action to address the world's most complex challenges so she obviously has dealt with multiple facets of connecting all the dots. She does bring more than 30 years of experience and environmental public policy and business management. Last 10 years have been on food security and food safety, and that is her priority right now. So I'd like to introduce Barbara Stinson. Welcome. Thank you so much Hank. And great to be here. What a tremendous panel of speakers today. Really, such an assemblage covering so many important perspectives, which is always critical in addressing such dynamic and complex challenges and issues. So I'm in a new position now, striving to address global food security issues, but I really started my work in this arena in food safety addressing Athletoxin and other contaminants and, honestly, I found an immediate passion for these issues for a lot of reasons and I can, I can go back to 2015 with the global burden of disease report coming out and the attention that got focused on food safety issues at that time. It was building but it was, it really launched in a substantial way at that time, addressed substantially at the global food security then. And that's when I started really hearing this term there is no food security without food safety. And it's true, you know, across the world and throughout the supply chain. So, I just want to say that we're hearing so much about the resilience in the global food system about building that resilience how are we going to do it. We were paying attention along the supply chain throughout and really working so hard to produce more food for the growing population and you hear the numbers, you know, every, every time we've heard it today. And yet, we know we need to reduce food waste, and the, perhaps the largest area of work and focus that needs to come out, especially in a pandemic of COVID-19 is the attention to producing food that is safe and retaining the safety of the food system that we've built in and really advancing it in all the ways that people have talked about today. This is paramount, because, you know, we're working to produce all this food and here it is in, in the system and with tremendous challenges to the safety and causing such food board and disease and other issues. So, we see a growing concern, we, we certainly see public health attention going on more cooperation. Last year was the first World Food Safety Day, we just celebrated it again and that's thank you FAO and WHO for hosting this event on the heels of that it's so important codex is paying attention the UN agencies are focused on this. And what we really see is this cooperation increasing and the private sector coming in as Dave elaborated on when in a pre competitive mode. Really trying to advance the cooperation which is essential you see it in the industry and the global food safety initiative and other initiatives mentioned today. You see it in their investment and you see it in potentially in cooperative of that investment. And I just, I just want to emphasize the importance of that of a year ago the first international food safety conference being hosted by FAO and WHO, and the African Union Commission hosted in Addis Ababa hosted also in Geneva on economic and trade issues It, it advanced the discussions and advanced the global attention on these issues and we have to keep that going. What we know about this pandemic is that it magnifies the issues in the global food system, the brakes, the weaknesses, the real areas of vulnerability, and it's so true in food safety as well so the global food safety strategy that's being developed the commitment by WHO to provide a 2025 global food burden report again. You know that it will lock it can and should launch us again as we build towards these events coming coming ahead of us we have a committee on food safety meets every year they're coming again they'll focus on these issues as we elevate them. Then the UN Food Systems Summit coming up in 2021 is is also critical. We here at the World Food Prize Foundation, we will host a series of meetings in October will focus on resilience in the food system will focus on the importance of food safety. So I think bringing together the resources data technology the the public private sector cooperation, the ability to respond quickly to make changes now so that the system doesn't continue to perpetuate in directions we don't want to go. This is crucial compliance leadership that you see within the industry is is is crucial because not every country can manage and monitor compliance. So I just like to close by saying this industry and the and the work that goes on with the public agencies on these matters. It's in a way a model for us on how we can handle modifications to the food system to create more resilience going forward. We should look at it that way we should take up this challenge that we have for the next 18 months to really advance all of these issues and we will lend our platform at the World Food Prize to do so at well in all the coming years. Thank you so much. Barbara thank you what a great capsule summary of everything, all the complex subjects that were covered today we really appreciate it. That's it for our session I'd like to thank FAO and WHO for sponsoring this also like to thank all our speakers and panelists. Vimlendra, Steve, and now go Dave, Vincent and Jeff. What tremendous insights you provide from many different directions, and I hope you as an audience were able to learn and understand these important issues. And there's more to be discussed. There's a lot of meat here that we have to continue to chip away at to make progress. So thank you again for coming today. And we look forward to you attending future events. Take care, be safe.