One Health and food safety
What is One Health?
One Health is an integrated, unifying approach that aims to balance and optimize the health of people, animals and the environment. Its use is particularly important to prevent, predict, detect and respond to global health threats.
To what emerging public health issues does One Health apply?
One Health applies to the following issues:
emerging, re-emerging and endemic zoonotic diseases
neglected tropical diseases
vector-borne diseases
antimicrobial resistance
food safety, foodborne diseases and food security
environmental contamination of water, air and soil
climate change.
How does One Health support food safety?
Food is an important vehicle for many zoonotic diseases. Multiple foodborne pathogens come from animals and are widespread in farm environments. For example, Brucella originates in sheep, cattle and goats.
These pathogens can easily enter the food chain. The most efficient way to prevent this is to apply the One Health approach, which considers the entire farm-to-fork chain.
Pesticides, mycotoxins and food additives can directly cause serious chronic animal and human diseases. Sustainable management of plant pests and diseases reduces the risk of food being tainted by such contaminants. One Health promotes the best sustainable practices to improve plant, animal and human health.
One Health offers a collaborative approach to predict, assess and mitigate the risks that occur among humans, animals, plants and the environment. The aim is to align efforts and maximize use of existing resources to develop new insights to inform changes to public health interventions and prevention strategies. In this way, all-around solutions to complex problems such as food safety can be reached.
What is the scope for applying One Health in food safety?
One Health has a broad and developing scope. Its original focus was infectious zoonotic diseases. Today, the concept embraces, and strongly connects food safety to, environmental and ecosystem health, social sciences, noninfectious diseases and chronic diseases, nutrition, climate change, antimicrobial resistance, biodiversity, and food security.
Beyond infectious hazards, chemicals can also enter the food chain, via animals or the environment. Chemical food contamination may be sourced to agrochemicals and antimicrobials used in plant and animal production. Naturally occurring toxins, such as mycotoxins, are becoming more of a threat to food safety, especially given the climate crisis. The impacts of climate change may heighten the occurrence and virulence of foodborne pathogens and will likely result in a rise in foodborne infection and intoxication.
Food systems dialogues bring together many stakeholders to work out how to deliver a greater quantity and quality of affordable, safe and nutritious food for a growing global population. Applying the One Health concept when engaging stakeholders in food systems development puts a focus on social objectives such as improved health and nutrition, social inclusion and improved ecosystem services.
What are the impacts of foodborne risks?
Who should be involved in applying the One Health approach?
Experts from the human health, animal health, plant health, agriculture and aquaculture, wildlife, food and environment sectors, plus academic institutions, industry, private sector and the community should all play a part.
Why must consumers know about the One Health approach?
Awareness of One Health helps consumers to understand how important, yet complex, it is to protect human health by ensuring animal health, food safety, food security, and environmentally sustainable food production.
How can we improve the take-up of the One Health approach in food safety in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region?
WHO works through its regional and country offices to enhance national capacities across the Eastern Mediterranean Region to prevent, detect and respond to shared public health threats among humans, animals, plants and the environment.
Adopting the One Health approach to food safety lets countries address food-related public health issues more effectively. This may involve the capacity-building of staff from national human, animal and environmental health authorities on how to address the risk of foodborne diseases. Through better coordination across sectors and better workforce capacities for outbreak investigation, rapid response, data analysis, and information sharing across sectors, better science-based decisions can be made.
Food safety in a heatwave
How do heatwaves affect food safety?
Bacteria multiply faster in summer with the rise in ambient temperatures – especially if it is humid as well as warm.
In heatwaves, many places are increasingly affected by power outages, posing a further risk to food safety.
What should I do during a heatwave to ensure food safety?
When shopping, use insulated bags for cold, frozen and perishable foods. This will keep them at a safe temperature until you get home.
Go straight home after doing your grocery shopping. Never leave food in the car during a heatwave.
Put perishable foods, like meat, poultry and seafood, in the fridge or freezer immediately.
Avoid filling the fridge or freezer too full. This reduces the airflow, leading to uneven temperatures, which will cause foods to spoil faster.
Cook just as much food as you need, to avoid having to fill your fridge with leftovers.
• Store leftovers in small, shallow, covered containers to help bring food to a safe temperature quickly.
Don’t rely on the look, smell or taste of foods to judge their safety. Most dangerous bacteria don’t alter these qualities.
If you order food, track your delivery to make sure you get it within 1 hour.
How can I prepare for a summer of anticipated heatwaves?
Regularly check the seals of fridge and freezer doors and make sure they are working well.
Clean and sanitize your fridge and freezer regularly.
Keeping up-to-date lists of what’s stored in your fridge and freezer can avoid the need to open the doors so often.
Get familiar with WHO’s five keys to safer food.
How can I keep food safe if the power goes off in a heatwave?
Use a thermometer to check the temperatures of foods in your fridge and freezer.
Check for ice crystals on packets and containers of frozen food. If items still have ice crystals and the freezer is below 5 ℃, your foods are safe.
What can I do if foods partially or completely thaw after a power outage?
Check the temperature of the freezer using a thermometer. If it is still below 5 ℃, you can refreeze or cook the foods.
