The Impact of Climate Change on Food Safety
- Project start date: 1 September 2013
- Project status: Completed
- Project type: Food safety
- Discipline: Food chain
- Principal researcher/s: Prof Chris Elliott, Queen’s University Belfast
- Collaborator/s: Single supplier
Research objective
Climate change will inevitably disrupt the world’s food production systems. How, and to what extent, continues to present a challenge for climate prediction scientists, particularly with regard to predicted changes at a local level. The interface of climate change and food security has understandably been the subject of much scrutiny. However, within this definition, the impacts upon food safety have received comparatively little attention.
The island of Ireland is a highly developed region, yet its largest industry remains agriculture and therefore the effects of climate change on food production and food safety are of particular economic and public health relevance.
Safefood commissioned the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast to undertake a literature-based review on the potential impacts of climate change on food safety from an island of Ireland perspective. The review highlighted those areas of the food chain that are most likely to be impacted. Recommendations to ameliorate those impacts are suggested. This report represents the most comprehensive assessment yet of the climate-related difficulties we face relating to the production of safe food on the Island of Ireland
Outputs
Research report
- Title: Climate Change Ireland: The potential impacts of climate change on food safety from an island of Ireland perspective
- Publication date: 13 October 2014
- Summary: For the island of Ireland, as elsewhere, gross changes due to climate change in local ecosystems can be expected that will result in changes in land use, potential agricultural land abandonment in some places and change of use in others from livestock to crops or vice versa.
- Findings:
- It is highly likely that there will be novel pest species such as invasive insects, weeds or fungi. Control responses may generate food safety problems due to the novelty of the pests in question and the unfamiliarity of farmers in dealing with them, using pesticides or other measures.
- Changes in weather patterns such as rainfall, seasonality and lengthening of the growing season are likely to entail changes in cropping shares and other adaptations. Increased winter rainfall coupled with milder temperatures in some areas may result in greater use of anthelminthics as snail vectors multiply. Threat from mycotoxins may intensify as the climate becomes more suitable for disease development.
- Recommendations:
- Biosecurity measures will need to be stepped up as environmental change continues and pest and diseases continue to systematically move north. Vigilance is needed to detect emerging threats in nearby warmer countries from which these agents might spread.
- The food industry and stakeholders on the island of Ireland must cooperate and make full use made of modelling and other methodologies in order to plan for climate change related emerging threats by setting in place monitoring and surveillance systems to identify problems before they become entrenched.
You can download the report below.
