Safe Food, Fair Food:
Introduction to the value chain
assessment toolkit
Tamsin Dewé
ICARDA-ILRI Training on Tools for Rapid Assessment of Sheep and Goat Value
Chains in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, 5-8 November 2012

Safe Food, Fair Food
 Protecting the health of poor consumers
and
 Safeguarding livelihoods of poor livestock
keepers and other value chain actors

Background
 Animal-source foods (ASF) have
high nutritional value
 ASF are single most important
source of food-borne disease
 80-90% African ASF marketed
informally
 However, food safety standards
can be prohibitive
– Restrict market access for
smallholder farmers
– Drives trading underground

Risk-Based Decision Making
in informal marketing systems
 Clear distinction between risk and hazard!
– Hazard = anything that causes harm
– Risk = probability + consequences
 Although hazards are often common in
informal markets, risk to human health is
not necessarily high
 Is there an acceptable level of risk?
4

Safe Food, Fair Food
 Risk-based approach to food safety
– Structured way of evaluating and dealing with
risks
– Identifies major risks in
food value chain from farm
to fork (multidisciplinary)
– Identifies most useful
points of intervention

Codex Alimentarius framework
for food safety risk assessment
Can it be present in food?
Hazard identification Can it cause harm?
What harm does it cause? How does it get from source to
How does harm depend on victim?
dose? What happens along the way?
Hazard characterization Exposure assessment
What is the harm?
What is its likelihood?
Risk characterization Participatory
methods fit
well
Risk management/
Risk communication
6

Participatory rural
assessment (PRA)
 Can participation improve food
safety?
 Engaging producers and consumers
– Consumers previously been neglected
 Rapid, practical indication of risks
arising from meat and milk
production
 Pre-tested in African context
 Performed in conjunction with value
chain assessment

Toolkit Topic
Participatory activity
Materials required
Questions to keep in
mind
Guidance for facilitator
-Phrasing
-Step-by-step instructions
Example of data capture
Final comments/check-
up

Toolkit
 Main areas of interest:
1. ASF production cycle and constraints
2. Herd dynamics and disease burden
3. ASF consumption cycle and constraints
4. Food selection,
management practices
and risk awareness

1. ASF production cycle
 How does production vary during the year?
 What are the constraints to producing larger
amounts of milk or meat?
 Which of these is most important?
 What are farmers’ solutions to the constraints?

1. ASF production cycle
 Activities:
– Seasonal calendar
– Pair-wise
comparison

2. Herd dynamics and disease
burden
 How many animals move into and out of
the herd in a year?
 Where do they come from?
 What happens to them?
 Morbidity and mortality rates
 Prioritisation of diseases

2. Herd dynamics and disease
burden
 Activities:
– Proportional
piling
– Listing

3. ASF consumption cycle
 What is the role of meat or
milk in the diet during the
year?
 What is the role of any ASF
in diet quality?
 What happens during times
of food shortage?
 To what extent are
sheep/goat keepers also
consumers? Photo: Charlie Pye-Smith/ILRI

4. Food selection and
management
 How accessible are sheep and goat products?
 How do people perceive food quality and safety?
 How does this influence consumption?
 How do conditions between purchase and
consumption affect nutritional value and food safety?
 Who bears the food safety risks or enjoys the
nutritional advantages of this product?
 What are some solutions to
improving food safety issues?

4. Food selection and
management
 Activity:
– “Njera” diagram 6.00 am 500 ml Milk
delivered to house
– Listing and ranking door by hawker
– Daily calendar/flow 6.01 am 500 ml Milk
taken to kitchen
diagram
6.02 am 250 ml Milk 6.15 am 250 ml Milk
stored in fridge boiled
4.30 pm 250 ml Milk 6.20 milk left to cool
taken from fridge and
boiled
6.00 am 250ml Milk 6.45 am 250 ml Milk
added to tea and drunk by children
drunk (unmixed) before
school

What do we get out of it?
 Outputs
– ASF production and consumption cycles and
constraints on these
– Food selection and handling practices
– Risk awareness and management
 Further work
– Baseline questionnaires and biological
sampling
– Identify and quantify risks
– Test interventions

Strategy & Timeline
Initial scoping
Integrated risk Best-bet Dissemination Upgraded
of 4 value
assessment interventions of findings curricula
chains
(yr 1) (yr 2-3) (yr 3) (yr 3)
(yr 1)
Continuous monitoring and evaluation
and impact assessment
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Safe Food, Fair Food
 Tamsin Dewé, Consultant
tamsindewe@gmail.com
 Kristina Rösel, Project Co-Ordinator
k.rosel@cgiar.org

http://livestockfish.cgiar.org