VSF Europa Symposium on Food sovereignty

8th - 9thth October 2009, Centro Internazionale per la Formazione e l'Informazione Veterinaria (CIFIV)

Via Nazionale S.S. 16 - 64025 Pineto (TE), Italy

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Programme and abstracts

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Opening speech
A.Broglia

VSF Belgium: Food sovereignty experience in Mali: improvement and commercialisation of milk

VSF Belgium - Short summary of activities 2008-2009

Les mini-laiteries au Mali: une déclinaison locale du concept de souveraineté alimentaire
J. van Mierlo, VSF Belgium

Au Mali, la production annuelle de lait est évaluée à 600 000 tonnes. Seule une faible partie de cette quantité est insérée dans une dynamique de marché, principalement dans la zone périurbaine de Bamako. Le Mali doit donc importer de randes quantités de produits laitiers.
Structurellement au Mali, le marché du lait local se caractérise par une déconnexion emporelle et spatiale entre la demande et l’offre de lait. Ne bénéficiant ni d’un accès au marché, ni d’un accès aux intrants productifs, les éleveurs ne peuvent valoriser le lait produit localement. Face à ce double défi, le dispositif de la mini-laiterie rurale permet de valoriser une part de la production de lait issue de l’élevage pastoral. Testé sur 9 sites au Mali par ICD, le CIDR et VSF B, ce dispositif a permis à plus de 500 éleveurs de sécuriser leur revenu issu du lait (165 000 fcfa/éleveur/an) mais aussi de pérenniser environ 120 emplois ruraux.
Chaque mini laiterie s’intègre dans un circuit relativement court qui transforme le lait des producteurs environnants et cible généralement les marchés proches. La laiterie se conçoit donc comme l’élément structurant d’une filière locale allant dans le sens du renforcement de la souveraineté alimentaire du Mali.
Au final, au Mali, la question de la souveraineté alimentaire relative au lait ne se pose donc pas tant en termes de quantité qu’en termes de disponibilité. Pour passer à une échelle nationale, une politique laitière volontariste, allant bien au-delà de la question de la taxation des importations, devrait être mise en place afin de faciliter l’accès du lait local au marché et l’accès des producteurs aux intrants locaux. Face à l’accroissement du coût de la vie et au manque actuel de lait local sur le marché, la politique mise en place devra piloter finement l’équilibre entre production locale et importations.

Presentation slides (PDF)

Joep van Mierlo, VSF-B Co-ordinator East Africa:
“I am a livestock and development specialist, working with livestock being a vehicle for community development in less privileged areas. In 1992 I started with Heifer Cameroon as an intern, continued as a project coordinator for small scale dairy development program and later on became deputy country director of the Heifer Cameroon program. This gives me about 5 years of solid project and management experience in Africa.
Upon return, in 1997, I worked out the plans for starting Heifer Nederland which was founded in 1999 and is still a growing organisation (averagely about 25% per year). Heifer Nederland is an organisation that raises funds for its jointly developed projects with their national partners in the “South”. For FY 2008 Heifer Nederland (HNL) had a budget of 2,1 million euro and was operating through its local partners in 10 countries in Africa and Central, Eastern Europe.
I have been active in the steering committee of the informal Heifer Global Network, with stakeholders from different nationalities from both the fundraising and implementing side.
In July 2009, on the 10th anniversary of HNL and after 17 years working in the broader Heifer network, I moved to Vétérinaires Sans Frontières - Belgium to further broaden my professional career!”

Human/animal diseases: from Teramo to Africa and from Africa to Teramo. A bilateral approach to respond to transboundary diseases
F. Monaco, I. Pascucci, IZSA&M

The Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e Molise (IZS A&M) and its National Reference Centre for Exotic Diseases have been engaged over the years in entering Collaboration Agreements with countries in the Mediterranean region, Eastern Europe, Latin America, southern and central Africa. A very successful collaborative effort, lasting over 16 years, is in force with the Namibian Veterinary Services.
The agreements are aiming from one side, to improve the competence of the Institute personnel in dealing with pathologies at risk of introduction into Italy and Europe and from the other to provide support in controlling diseases threatening the Namibian livestock industry.
Following this successful experience the collaboration has been extended to other Southern African Countries. Diseases such AHS, Equine Encephalosis, RVF, LSD, CBPP, Ephemeral Fever,
Heartwater and Dourine have been the object of the collaboration. Within Italian-Namibian collaboration a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) developed by IZS A &M is going to be provided to Central Veterinary Laboratory of Windhoek. Furthermore a project is ongoing, in collaboration with FAO, for supplying with it other Southern African Development Comunity (SADC) countries.

Ilaria Pascucci is Veterinarian . She got the degree in Veterinary Medicine and the PhD on Epidemiology and Control of Zoonoses at University of Bologna. She has been working at the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’ Abruzzo e del Molise “G. Caporale” (IZSA&M) since 2002. Her main fields of interest are vector borne diseases and in particular ticks and tick borne diseases.

VSF Spain vision of food sovereignty: the practical example of a project in Uganda.
R. Gonzalez, VSF Spain

http://www.vsfe.org/twiki/pub/Public/Symposium09/Elsa_Vetermon_CHAINS_OF_LIFE,_AN_ATTEMPT_FOR_FOOD_SOVEREIGNTY.ppsx[Presentation slides (PDF)]]

Food safety and food sovereignty: a possible linkage for rural development?
A.Gervelmeyer, European Food Safety Authority

The project “Safe food, fair food: Building capacity to improve the safety of animal-source foods and ensure continued market access for poor farmers in sub Saharan Africa” is managed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI, Nairobi, Kenya) and funded by the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). It was initiated in 2008 and will conclude in 2010. Having recognised that top-down approaches using food safety standards and methods applied in industrialised countries fail to improve food safety in the informal sector in sub Saharan Africa, the project aims at combining risk-based approaches to food safety with participatory and gender-sensitive methods, thus empowering small scale farmers, regulators and consumers to jointly identify their food safety priorities and develop pro-poor strategies for mitigation, leading to better health of consumers and more income for producers. Food safety stakeholders were identified in 8 African countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania). A capacity for undertaking risk analysis in a participatory manner and for advocating this approach was built through regional and national workshops. Situational analyses on food safety were carried out in the collaborating countries in 2008. Currently participatory risk analysis methodologies and decision-making tools are being field-tested by Master- and PhD students from the collaborating institutions through proof-of-concept studies. In 2010, the impact of the applied risk mitigation strategies will be assessed and the scientific evidence as well as the field-tested methodologies and tools will be disseminated.

Presentation slides (PDF)

Andrea Gervelmeyer is a German veterinarian who has worked for GTZ and FAO on animal health in Africa before moving to public health, specialising on the epidemiology of foodborne diseases. She currently works at the European Food Safety Authority on the identification of emerging risks for food and feed safety.

Food, livestock development, emergencies and risks: challenges of the next decade
P. Ankers and K. Dietze, Food and Agriculture Organization

In September 2009, there were more than one billion undernourished people worldwide. FAO estimates show a significant deterioration of an already disappointing trend witnessed over the past ten years. The current global economic slowdown—following soaring food prices in 2006-2008—lies at the core of the sharp increase in world hunger. It has reduced incomes and employment opportunities of the poor and significantly lowered their access to food.
But there are other important issues such as the use of food. Only one fourth of the world’s cereal production is currently used directly for human consumption. Agricultural production increasingly goes into non-food uses, such as the production of biofuels, but also in animal feed in order to satisfy growing meat consumption. All indications are for continued growth in global demand for livestock products and the bulk of the increase will take place in developing countries.
Serious action is required if the livestock sector is to satisfy this growth in ways that support society’s goals for poverty reduction and food security, environmental sustainability and human health. The opportunities and challenges offered by the sector must be carefully balanced. Besides being a consumer of cereals that could be produced for human consumption, livestock contributes to climate change. The livestock sector must improve its environmental performance.
Livestock diseases pose systemic risks that must be addressed. Diseases reduce production and productivity, disrupt local and national economies, threaten human health and exacerbate poverty. Animal health systems have been neglected in many parts of the world, and the resulting institutional weaknesses and information gaps mean that investments in animal-health related public goods are often inadequate.
The livestock sector could contribute more to food security and poverty reduction if more judicious policy and institutional reforms are put in place and significant public and private investments are made.

Presentation slides (PDF)

Dr Philippe Ankers is a veterinarian with a specialisation in Development & Environmental matters. He is currently Animal Production Officer at FAO and works mainly on the resolution of animal health issues affecting developing countries. Besides his time as a private veterinary surgeon in rural Switzerland, Dr Ankers has ten years of field experience in Africa where he has done applied research on
helminthosis control before getting involved in development and emergency programmes in the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes Region. He worked at the International Trypanotolerance Centre in West Africa as project manager before joining VSF-Suisse as Regional Coordinator for the Horn of Africa in 2001. He then became Executive Director of VSF-Suisse from 2004 to 2007.

Dr. Klaas Dietze is a veterinarian currently working as Associate Animal Production Officer at FAO's Animal Production and Health Division. He has some working experience in private veterinary farm animal practice in Germany and before joining FAO he worked as postdoctoral researcher on animal health and nutrition in low- input farming systems at the University of Kassel. In his current position he addresses all issues related to pig production and he is involved in projects calculating the green house gas emissions from different livestock sector commodities. In combination to this activity related to the development of mitigation policy options, he works together with FAO's Natural Resources Department on a climate change adaptation strategy for the livestock sector.

Examples of food sovereignty in Italy: organic farming, shortening the production chain and building networks of small scale producers
P. Venezia, Prober

Pietro Venezia studia ed applica zootecnia biologica dal 1991, sistemi sostenibili e medicina non convenzionale sia a livello internazionale che nazionale. Si occupa di consulenze tecniche alle aziende zootecniche, sviluppo di filiere corte per mense scolastiche/ristorazione/gruppi di acquisto solidale ed appoggio ai farmers market biologici locali. Svolge la propria attività in Romagna.

Food security in natural disaster: the experience of L’Aquila earthquake
G. Migliorati, N. Ferri, D. Morelli, IZSA&M

After the earthquake that shook L’Aquila and surrounding towns on April 6th 2009, Guido Bertolaso, Head of the Italian Civil Protection Agency, assigned to Vincenzo Caporale, Director of the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell’Abruzzo e del Molise “G. Caporale” (IZS A&M), the management of veterinary activities in the rescue and recovery efforts following the disaster. The IZS A&M, beside supporting the Italian Health Service (SSN) intervention, has set up, coordinated by the “Health Office 2” of the Civil Protection Agency, an efficient organizational structure to guarantee the performance of daily routinary institutional activities and to face all sanitary aspects of the dramatic situation caused by the quake. All activities were performed in collaboration with Veterinary Services of L’Aquila province and Abruzzo region, health officials of the Anti-Adulteration office of the Pescara Carabinieri, voluntary associations, freelance veterinarians.
In the assigned area, the IZS A&M has provided information tools and communication systems needed to re-establish all communication flows among institutions and to restore information management of sanitary activities necessary to face the dramatic situation.
IZS A&M has planned all activities concerning: food safety and animal health and welfare of livestock and pets. Mixed teams of professionals, health officials and IZS A&M personnel have carried out surveys of: tent camps (hygiene of kitchens and sanitary services), livestock (assessment of damages and livestock management, provision of feed supply, carcasses disposal), pets present in tent camps and hotels accommodating victims of the quake (assessment of sanitary and feedstuff needs). Specific survey forms and customized software have been prepared in order to guarantee an efficient needs management and information sharing.
In particular, for what concerns food safety in tent camps, the teams have carried out: i) the training of operators of field kitchens and the distribution of relevant educational material, ii) the surveillance on the implementation of proper hygiene procedures, with the help of a software specifically developed for its management, iii) the official controls on potability of water supplies and on the hygiene of kitchens of accommodation facilities, iv) the coordination of the disposal of damaged food supplies.
The organizational structure implemented to face the emergency is the first model of multi –expertise integration in the health sector ever accomplished in Europe. The acquired experience represents a significant opportunity for the future planning and design of codified and harmonized intervention procedures which, supported by continuous training, would allow an efficient and flexible health activities management in disaster situations.

Abstract (PDF): Food security in natural disaster: the experience of L’Aquila earthquake (English & Italian)

Raising awareness of the importance of small-scale farming in developing countries to increase food security and reduce poverty
C.Mainenti, AVSF France

This is a Development Educational Project implemented by the VSF Europa members of AVSF, SIVtro, VSF Belgium, VETAID. The project was implemented in Belgium, France, Scotland, Italy, with further partners from Iran, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Brazil, Haiti, DR Congo. The objective of the project was “Promote food sovereignty to support the development of small-scale farming”. The activities include production of educational tools in collaboration with partners in developing countries; organisation conferences and round table discussions for farmers and politicians across Europe; organisation seminars to raise awareness amongst agriculture and vet students in Europe. The results foresee 8 educational tools produced, available in different languages, showing the problems faced by our partners; 19 conferences and 4 exchange meetings organised awareness of 450 farmers and politicians raised; 550 teaching hours for 4500 students; publications and multiplying actions.

Carline Mainenti: advocacy manager AVSF since 2001, anthropologist, specialist on the role of family farms in the South

Presentation of the guide on food sovereignty and outputs of the DEP by SIVtro
A.Dessi, SIVtro

Round table: “Food, development, trade, rural communities”
Chairman: L.Farina, EFTA Surveillance Authority, Brussels