The Importance of Healthy and Hygienic Food Streets in India

This brief describes a Government of India initiative – the Healthy and Hygienic Food Streets (HHFS) programme that aims to make the country’s street food safer. It shares some of GAIN’s recent contributions to these efforts and provides some implications for national and state governments to consider.

Market Assessment Tools for Traditional Markets

The purpose of this assessment tool is to gather data from vendors, consumers, and key stakeholders in traditional markets to identify food safety challenges and perceptions. This information helps design effective behaviour change interventions to enhance food safety practices. The tool includes methods for comprehensive data collection through interviews, observations, and discussions.

GAIN Student Challenge 2024

15 November 2024 - 16 November 2024  Arnhem, Netherlands , Global

With this Student Challenge, GAIN aims to engage students from diverse backgrounds raising awareness of our work on food, nutrition and food systems. Through expert sessions, we will deepen the students’ understanding of food systems and the global nutrition situation including the link to climate.  The students will get insights into the challenges faced when trying to improve international food systems and nutrition. Coaching will be provided on interdisciplinary teamwork and on how to pitch their solutions to a professional jury.

Committee on World Food Security - CFS 52

21 October 2024 - 25 October 2024  Rome, Italy, Global

The 52nd Plenary Session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS 52) will be held from 21 to 25 October 2024 in Rome, Italy.

GAIN Working Paper Series n°40: Bringing Food Safety to the Shoppers

Reducing foodborne disease in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is crucial for advancing nutrition, health, and other development goals. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)/Feed the Future’s Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food (EatSafe) program sought to harness consumer demand as a mechanism to improve food safety practices and generate evidence on how to raise consumer demand for safe, nutritious foods in traditional market settings—the main source of food for most LMIC consumers.

Infrastructure for Food Safety Improvement in Local Markets

Buguruni market is a traditional food market in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania with about 2,630 vendors selling their produce to about 70,000 consumers daily. In a rapid assessment conducted in 2020, almost a third of consumers reported concerns related to food safety when shopping in the market.

Increasing Food Safety in Traditional Markets

EatSafe: Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food (EatSafe) is a USAID Feed the Future programme that works in traditional markets in Nigeria and Ethiopia to improve food safety.

To prepare safer food… be prepared for the unexpected

We expect to be eating peanuts, not extreme amounts of aflatoxins, and chicken but not E. coli. We expect that our salads are washed with clean water, and that the person who prepared the salad first washed their hands. We cannot, however, always assume the expected and thus need to be ready for the unexpected. Unexpected events can take the form of natural disasters, such as earthquakes or floods. They might also come from power cuts or amid sudden political change. Such events can disrupt food availability, accessibility and safety, leaving us exposed to increased levels of unsafe food.

Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition Statement on Food Safety at WHA77

At the 77th World Health Assembly in Geneva, Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) voiced its support for the WHO Global Strategy for Food Safety and reducing the risks in traditional markets. 

GAIN Discussion Paper Series 16 - Nutritious and Safe Food for All

Foodborne disease is a major global health challenge, causing millions of illnesses every year – mostly in low- and middle-income countries – and hindering achievement of other global goals, such as improved nutrition. Since contamination of food can happen at any point ‘from farm to fork’, reducing the burden of foodborne illness requires a whole-of-food-system approach: one that considers all actors and activities that play a role in production, processing, distribution, preparation, and consumption of food. The objective of this paper is to discuss how to enact such a food system approach to food safety, with a focus on LMICs.