INDONESIA – Senior Scientist and former Codex Alimentarius Vice President Prof. Dr. Purwiyatno Hariyadi has observed that food system in Asia is facing a triple food safety threat from microbiological, chemical, and physical contamination, putting national food security at risk.
Dr. Hariyadi delivered this main message during recent Fi Asia Conference in Jakarta, Indonesia. He linked the rise in the threats to climate change and urged for food safety and relevant measures to be considered as a necessity for nations to achieve food security.
“Without food safety, there can be no food security because there can essentially be no food if it is not safe to eat – this makes food safety a prerequisite of food security. The fact is that food safety has major impacts with health concerns being the main one but also negatively affecting the economy and trade relationships,” he said’.
“We also need to recognise that climate change is in fact accelerating the food safety issue [especially in markets like Asia] as temperature is a very major player in terms of exacerbating harm and many markets in this region have tropical weather.”
Looking at microbiological threats, Dr. Hariyadi explained that studies have shown that salmonellosis cases in Europe have increased by 5% to 10% with every 1°C rise in weekly average temperatures, and a similar trend had been observed for Campylobacter infections as well.
He argued that temperature plays such a key role here as a higher temperature provides a more suitable environment for microbes to live and thrive in.
“Physical hazards to our food are also affected by climate change as this will exacerbate situations like floods, droughts, storms and so on which just opens the food supply up to contamination, and us the consumers to waste, debris and direct contaminants like microplastics,” he underscored.
Toxins are one of the biggest areas of concern when it comes to the chemical contamination of foods. These toxins are absorbed by plants and also accumulate in shellfish and other seafood, which basically means two major food sources i.e. Plant-based and seafood products face significant risk.
Dr. Hariyadi added that phycotoxins for example are produced by some algae and can harm human health in multiple ways such as Ciguatera Fish Poisoning, this occurs when fish eat algae with ciguatoxins, and can cause symptoms such as nausea, diarrhoea, extreme itching, headaches and more.
He further noted that in plants, higher temperatures result in increased moisture levels in crops, which promote the growth of mycotoxins. This can lead to direct food poisoning when consuming the contaminated plant or indirect poisoning from eating animals that consumed the contaminated plant.
Additionally, he referenced a study on methylmercury in fish, which found that a 1°C rise in sea temperature led to a 4.4% increase in methylmercury concentration, posing significant risks to the human nervous system if consumed in excess.