2021 Virtual Global Food Safety Initiative Conference

KEYNOTE SPEECH

FAO DIRECTOR-GENERAL 

2021 Virtual Global Food Safety Initiative Conference

23 March at 12 am, 2021

As prepared

 

Distinguished Participants,

Dear colleagues and friends,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

1. I am honored to deliver the keynote address at this important gathering of decision-makers from across the food supply chain and around the world.

2. You, as food industry leaders, are responsible for the production, processing and distribution of food, touching the lives of millions every day.

3. I know the GFSI well from my past professional experience and was impressed by its activities and its approach of promoting the use of global food safety standards in close relationship with Codex, GAP and others.

4. After all, the fate and well-being of every human being on our planet depend on reliable access to sufficient amounts of safe and nutritious foods.

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5. The pandemic has been challenging for all of us. The related measures introduced affected all people and all businesses.

6. FAO has been providing support to governments and other stakeholders around the world from the first days of the pandemic, working tirelessly to provide policy guidance to all sectors of the agri-food system, and together, we have achieved much.

7. Our focus has been to enable the adaptation of food safety governance and food trade processes to ensure the smooth flow of foods from the field to the consumption as much as possible.

8. All of you stepped up to the challenges and frontlines, did the very best possible to minimize the disruptions in the production and supply chain.

9. A true achievement for which I applaud you.

10. Yet much remains to be done.

11. Today more people suffer from food insecurity than before the crisis, more people struggle to access sufficient, safe and nutritious foods and the trends are not encouraging.

12. Feeding every person on the planet for the years to come will require a fundamental transformation of our agri-food systems.

13. To feed 10 billion people by 2050 will require productive, efficient and sustainable agri-food systems that produce safe and nutritious food for everyone, to ensure that all humans can live a healthy life.

14. To be clear: The future of our agri-food systems defines the future of humanity. This is not an exaggeration – it is a fact.

15. We must create the economic growth and employment opportunities needed to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality, sustain biodiversity and preserve the natural resource environment.

16. We need our agri-food systems to deliver food security and better nutrition for all, to be economically sustainable, to be inclusive and to have a positive impact on climate and environment.

17. Unfortunately, we all know that today’s agri-food systems are NOT fulfilling this aspiration. Urgent action is therefore required by all players and partners.

18. Let us acknowledge the many challenges facing agri-food systems today.

19. More and more million people are suffer from chronic hunger today.

20. And a healthy diet costs far more than the international poverty threshold of USD 1.90 per day, making it unaffordable for more than 3 billion people in the world.

21. The burden of malnutrition in all its forms persists. Roughly, 144 million children under the age of 5 are stunted, 47 million are wasted and 38 million are overweight.

22. Unsafe food causes significant financial burden in low- and middle-income countries, generating a productivity loss of some USD 95 billion per year.

23. COVID-19 impact on economies has been worsened. Employment rates dropped. It is estimated that up to 132 million people might have joined the ranks of the undernourished in 2020, threatening to reverse the progress achieved over the last two decades.

24. At the same time, our current agri-food systems are estimated to contribute up to 37 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and continue to over-use scarce natural resources.

25. We all need to work harder to address these challenges and to move towards efficient and sustainable agri-food systems.

26. First, we need to better understand and minimize the trade-offs that exist between competing policy objectives.

27. Second, we need to harness the power of innovation and digital technologies to achieve transformative changes.

28. Quality development and 4-R approaches to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover, should be integral part of a package of solutions for the efficiency of water, land and agricultural inputs (fertilizers, chemicals and others).

29. Most governments and food system actors have yet to harness and integration of the power by a package of innovative technologies.

30. To fully leverage the benefits of these technologies, governments and public sector organizations need to partner and work closely with the private sector to promote inclusive business models that reduce the digital divide and capacity on innovation among countries and regions.

31. And in turn, the private sector needs to scale up its partnerships and social responsibility with the public sector.

32. Third, we must strengthen governance, human capital and institutions.

33. At this point, I would like to pose the question to you: how can your organization, your industry help ensure that our food is produced and delivered more sustainably than ever before?

34. We all know that this is a very complex topic, which encompasses an intricate network of incentives and market forces.

35. But every stakeholder within the agri-food system will need to transform operations and retool approaches with the aim of providing safe and nutritious amounts of foods that is efficiently and sustainably produced.

36. We need to build the capacities in countries but also strengthen our ability for collective action to develop the agri-food systems we want.

37. Actions to address these challenges will be accelerated through the UN Food Systems Summit and through the many multi-stakeholder platforms and initiatives, which have been formed to support the development of more sustainable agri-food systems.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

38. The 2030 Agenda calls for action to end hunger and eliminate all forms of malnutrition by ensuring that sufficient quantities of safe, nutritious, affordable and healthy foods are available to all.

39. The deadline for achieving these Sustainable Development Goals is rapidly approaching with only nine seasons.

40. We need to double all efforts to address the challenges facing agri-food systems, using all the means, tools and mechanisms available to us. There is no time to waste.

41. In that context, I like the title of your conference - Food safety: Rethink, Reset, Recharge.

42. My work at FAO has been along the same lines over the last 20 months.

43. The transformation of agri-food systems is a global priority and at the core of FAO’s mandate.

44. We need a strong engagement of the private sector for our agri-food systems to become MORE efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable.

45. At FAO we accelerated the transformation during 2020.

46. I was talking about the need for a digital FAO before 2020.

47. Now the digital FAO is a reality, working in an agile manner within a new organizational structure and delivering in the new digital world.

48. And we are proposing a new Strategic Framework to promote the redouble efforts on the SDGs.

49. The Strategic Framework is about building MORE efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, leaving no one behind.

50. To achieve the ambitious programme that we have laid out for ourselves, we need the engagement of our Members alongside all partners and in particular the private sector. 

51. And we are more open for business than ever before: The implementation of FAO’s new Strategy for Private Sector Engagement, adopted last December, is well underway.

52. We have accelerated our efforts to create an enabling environment for new ways of engaging with the private sector.

53. The continued development of the CONNECT portal will be of highest priority throughout 2021.

54. I would like to invite all of you to take full advantage of the new ways to engage with FAO in mutually beneficial partnerships; to create the synergies needed to transform our agri-food systems.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

55. Food safety comes first - if it is not safe, it is not food.

56. And Food safety is everyone’s business.

57. Ensuring that our food is safely produced, processed, distributed and consumed throughout the entire supply chain.

58. Safe food, from tillage to table, from muddy to mouth, from boat to bowl; this requires a strong collaboration of all stakeholders, public sector, private sector and consumers.

59. I know that GFSI was one of our first partners to promote World Food Safety Day, and I thank you for this.

60. I encourage you to join us again, in celebrating World Food Safety Day on the 7 June of this year.

61. I hope that this year’s GFSI conference will contribute to a better understanding of the private sector’s vital role in transforming our agri-food system towards feeding the world more and better.

62. Let’s roll up our sleeves and work together!

Thank you.