The FTF EatSafe activity sought to improve food safety in traditional markets, adopting a systems approach and a focus on consumer demand. Traditional markets in LMICs are complex spaces at the core of food systems. Traditionally neglected, they are now recognized as key food environments where most people in LMICs procure their food, and where consumer demand meets supply chains.
Feed the Future's Evidence and Action Towards Safe Nutritious Food (EatSafe) aimed to increase consumer demand for safe, nutritious foods in traditional food markets in Nigeria and Ethiopia. This document details recommended approaches for implementing activities aimed at enhancing food safety in traditional markets through demand-driven behavior change, drawing on insights and lessons learned from EatSafe’s activities in these countries.
Improving food safety in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly in the traditional markets where most consumers shop, is crucial for advancing nutrition, health, and other development goals. Feed the Future’s (FTF) Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food (FTF EatSafe) activity aimed to stimulate and leverage consumer demand for safer food to drive improvements in food safety in traditional markets.
The purpose of this assessment tool is to gather data from vendors, consumers, and key stakeholders in traditional markets to identify food safety challenges and perceptions. This information helps design effective behaviour change interventions to enhance food safety practices. The tool includes methods for comprehensive data collection through interviews, observations, and discussions.
Reducing foodborne disease in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is crucial for advancing nutrition, health, and other development goals. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)/Feed the Future’s Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food (EatSafe) program sought to harness consumer demand as a mechanism to improve food safety practices and generate evidence on how to raise consumer demand for safe, nutritious foods in traditional market settings—the main source of food for most LMIC consumers.
Buguruni market is a traditional food market in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania with about 2,630 vendors selling their produce to about 70,000 consumers daily. In a rapid assessment conducted in 2020, almost a third of consumers reported concerns related to food safety when shopping in the market.
EatSafe: Evidence and Action Towards Safe, Nutritious Food (EatSafe) is a USAID Feed
the Future programme that works in traditional markets in Nigeria and Ethiopia to
improve food safety.
Foodborne disease is a major global health challenge, causing millions of illnesses every year – mostly in low- and middle-income countries – and hindering achievement of other global goals, such as improved nutrition. Since contamination of food can happen at any point ‘from farm to fork’, reducing the burden of foodborne illness requires a whole-of-food-system approach: one that considers all actors and activities that play a role in production, processing, distribution, preparation, and consumption of food. The objective of this paper is to discuss how to enact such a food system approach to food safety, with a focus on LMICs.
