EatSafe: Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food

Feed the Future's EatSafe: Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food is a USAID-funded, five-year program aiming to enable lasting improvements in the safety of nutritious foods sold in traditional food markets, where millions of people buy and sell food everyday. More information about program objectives and outcomes are in this one-page brief, while additional context is provided in this EatSafe promotional brochure.

EatSafe has three objectives

Goal 1

Consolidate and generate knowledge and evidence about consumer values and perceptions related to food safety; gender roles and norms that may influence food-related behavior among consumers, vendors and other actors; and quantified food safety risks in traditional markets.

Goal 2

Develop and test interventions and tools to support their implementation for consumers and traditional market vendors to communicate about and/or reduce food safety risks.

Goal 3

Generate evidence of the impact of these interventions to engage and empower consumers and market actors to better obtain safe, nutritious foods.

The program will be implemented in two phases in each country

Phase I - Combining global evidence with target county situational analyses, EatSafe and its partners will better understand food safety-related risks, attitudes, knowledge, and practices of consumers, vendors, and other influential stakeholders across the food system.
Phase II - EatSafe will implement a series of interventions co-designed with local stakeholders to generate new knowledge on how to engage and empower consumers to demand safe, nutritious food.

EatSafe is led by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, in partnership with the International Livestock Research Institute, Pierce Mill Entertainment and Education, and the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics. EatSafe is currently staffed and operating with USAID Mission concurrence in Nigeria and Ethiopia.

Contact

Richard Pluke
Lead, Food Safety, and Chief of Party, EatSafe

Richard joined GAIN in February 2022 as Chief of Party, EatSafe. Prior to working at Bayer Crops of Science, Richard spent 15 years at FINTRAC Inc. where he served as Deputy Chief of Party on several USAID programs in Tanzania. He received his PhD from the University of Florida at Gainesville in Entomology and Farming Systems.

Contact

Caroline Smith DeWaal
Deputy Director, EatSafe

Caroline is the Deputy Director of EatSafe (Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food) at the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). Prior to joining GAIN, She has previously worked as an International Food Safety Policy Manager for FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

Contact

Elisabetta Lambertini
Senior Research Scientist

In her position as Senior Research Scientist in food safety for nutrition Elisabetta is part of a multidisciplinary team where she oversees the research activities of the USAID-funded EatSafe programme. Her expertise focuses on risk-based quantitative tools to support the design of safer food supply networks, linking behaviours, risk perceptions, technology, and policy to enable data-driven decisions.

Contact

Teale Yalch
EatSafe Project Manager, Operations and Partnership

Teale Yalch is EatSafe Project Manager, Operations and Partnership. She is also the Lead for the Marketplace for Nutritious Foods and Reducing Postharvest Loss (PLAN) programmes. Teale is based in Washington DC and supports the design and implementation of the Marketplace in Kenya and Rwanda and PLAN in Ethiopia, Indonesia and Nigeria.

Contact

Abby Reich
Knowledge Mobilisation Manager, EatSafe

Abby Reich is the Knowledge Mobilisation Manager of EatSafe and is based in Washington DC, USA. She oversees EatSafe communications, knowledge management, and dissemination of learnings to spark increased action for food safety in traditional markets.