Informal food markets

Incentives for change

Regulation and enforcement, with its related fines and harassment of food businesses, has often been the sole “incentive for change” used by governments in low-income countries. This approach has proven largely unsuccessful when not counterproductive.

A far better incentive is the economic gain that comes from selling safer food. However, while food safety features highly in the interests of consumers across the globe, among budget-constrained consumers, food safety doesn’t “sell” – it’s simply not enough of a priority to them compared to affordability. To increase food safety, governments and private industry must raise consumer awareness about the issue and gradually create a demand for safe food that the market will respond to. Approaches should include strategies for self-regulation and peer pressure that have been explored in various countries.

An enabling environment

Informal markets are mostly unregulated. Governments in Africa and Asia often lack the capacity to inspect, test and enforce food safety standards. And when they do, all too often, authorities take a punitive approach to food safety in their informal markets by ramping up inspection capacity and increasing the number of officers visiting premises, issuing fines and confiscating goods. But where businesses are not officially registered, where taxes are not paid, where corruption is widespread and where people have few other options to get an income, this punitive approach will be neither effective nor sustainable. In fact, it is likely to backfire, triggering price increases and reduced access to food, especially among the most vulnerable, as experienced in the dairy sector in Kenya.

The goal should be to gradually embed the markets within the country’s legal frameworks to produce gains on the food safety, food security and economic security fronts.

Time to rethink

Food safety is a growing concern in national and international agendas, and investments in this area are expected to grow, as the health and economic impact of sub-optimal food safety can’t be neglected any longer.

Now is the time to rethink what food safety management should look like in low- and middle-income countries. Increasing regulation and inspection of informal markets won’t succeed. It is far better to protect food security and the livelihoods these markets offer, to legitimise and support these markets, improve their capacity through facilitated access to credit, and find ways to incentivise their investments on food safety.

These markets will then go from being an emblem of underdevelopment and poverty to being a symbol of an independent, thriving and healthy economy.

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This articles was co-written by Silvia Alonso Alvarez; Senior scientist – Epidemiologist, International Livestock Research Institute,  Delia Grace; Professor Food Safety Systems at the Natural Resources Institute (UK) and contributing scientist ILRI, International Livestock Research Institute, and  Hung Nguyen-Viet; Co-Leader, Animal and Human Health Program, International Livestock Research Institute.

Source: theconversation