Risk analysis to identify cost-effective control strategies for reducing Aflatoxin risk
To aid in the evaluation of food safety risks and the effectiveness of potential ways to intervene, decision-makers in some countries are increasingly relying on risk analysis as a tool to help them choose effective management strategies for many types of foodborne disease hazards. Risk analysis is a scientifically based process that identifies the source of the hazard, its characteristics, the health risks it poses, and the impacts of various control strategies across the whole value chain. The value chains in Kenya and Mali are still often based on anonymous transactions in spot markets, implying limited communication and coordination between farmers, traders, and consumers. Given this lack of coordination, coupled with poor infrastructure and insufficient cold storage systems, market participants have little knowledge or incentive to reduce Aflatoxin. Yet the need to prevent this food safety hazard from entering the food chain is particularly important for poor population since they suffer the greatest burden of foodborne disease.
From the prevalence data collected and obtained with latitude/longitude coordinates in objective 2, the Maxent program (Phillips et al. 2006) will be used to model and create predictive maps of Aflatoxin. Maxent takes a set of known locations of a species (in this case Aflatoxin) and a set of environmental variables (climate, land cover, elevation, NDVI) and produces an output probability map for the species distribution.
- Models developed and validated using field data acquired at harvest, three and six months after harvest and a brief on the methodology used to develop the risk maps.
- Risk maps created
- Decision makers are made aware of the preharvest high risk areas in study countries for aflatoxin contaminated crops and use the results of the study to promote solutions in their countries
- Decision makers are made aware of the potential magnitude of health problems that may occur if aflatoxin are not controlled for and use the results of the study to promote solutions in their countries
- Findings are available to other scientists, Ministries of Agriculture and Health and AGRA
Activities regarding risk analysis capturing the growth and decline of aflatoxin along the value chain and predictive modeling of the effectiveness of proposed risk management measures are as follows:
- Risk pathway analysis
- Risk assessment a brief on the methodology used to develop the risk assessment
- Cost benefit analysis and a brief on the methodology used to develop the cost benefit analysis
- Cost effectiveness analysis and a brief on the methodology used to develop the cost-effectiveness analysis
- Stakeholders (Ministries of Agriculture and Health and AGRA); understand where critical control points for minimizing aflatoxin risks are and express an interest in implementing control strategies
- Stakeholders (Ministries of Agriculture and Health and AGRA) understand the cost and benefits of adopting the known risk management strategies and adopt them;
- Stakeholders understand which control measures under what circumstances would be cost-effective for them to adopt to reduce aflatoxin prevalence at various points along the value chain