The European Union is looking to promote a shift towards healthier diets with sustainable health systems, including through more sustainable protein sources, nutrition-sensitive value chains, and less food waste.¹ In other words a more sustainable way of living that benefits both the vast majority of people and the environment together. Fragmented interventions are certainly not game changers.² For the EU to reach the global climate goals and build a sustainable and healthy food system, more systematic approaches, global solidarity, and a powerful mix of policies and incentives are required.³ The agenda focuses on the help to promote the shift towards the healthier diets within sustainable food systems, including through more sustainable protein sources, nutrition-sensitive value chains.⁴ In the context of the ongoing food, energy and costs of living crisis, concerted efforts are needed for strengthening equitable, environmentally sustainable, and economically prosperous food systems providing food for all.⁵ While this transformation is facing this many global challenges, a recent study by IFPRI and IISD, “Achieving Sustainable Food Systems in a Global Crisis”, based on the Ceres2030 report, show how and at what cost countries like South Africa can achieve this goal.⁶

Four international organizations are focusing on strengthening food safety as part of a One Health approach to human and environmental health.⁷

Donate to our feeding schemes to those desperate for food and basic needs. Even R10 for the sake of Allah may be a means of barakat.

Rasulullah ﷺ said, ” Whoever relieves a believer’s distress of the distressful aspects of this world, Allah will rescue him from a difficulty of the difficulties of the Hereafter.”

The One Health approach calls for a holistic and systems-based understanding of the interconnection between the health of humans, animals, plants, and the environment. Food safety risks can be understood through a One Health lens. For example, foodborne diseases are caused when microbial, chemical, or other toxic contaminants are ingested through food, and such contaminants can have various entry routes into food from the environment. AMR, which the Plan of Action calls the leading cause of death around the world, is also an important food safety risk under a One Health perspective. The spread of resistant genes and pathogens has been accelerated by a number of environmental and social factors, such as the inappropriate use of antibiotics in agriculture. The Plan of Action states that AMR was associated with 4.95 million deaths in 2019 alone. Action Track 4 of the Joint Plan of Action centers on strengthening the assessment, management, and communication of food safety risks. Ways in which food is produced may not only affect the safety of the final product, but also the health of animals, plants, and the environment; the affected health of animals, plants, and the environment may then circle back around and impact food safety. (International Organizations Develop One Health Action Plan, Food Safety is Key Component)

So now we have the issue of our food being less healthy as a result of pathogens, microbes and antibiotics injected into cattle or sprayed on crops. The damage is done by poisons spread in meat or fruit and vegetables that can cause disease to spread through the body. These kind of diseases are found in meat that comes from animals that eat rotting fruit and vegetables. Most notorious is the pig. The pig known to be the source animal of pork, ham and bacon is considered to be the most unclean animal in Islam and Orthodox Judaism. Other animals are also prone to becoming sick such as cows or even goats. They can easily fall victim to deadly disease that are carried by cattle ticks and other insects such as mosquitos and flies. Goats are known to eat almost anything, so their meat will be at risk. Food poisoning is a huge risk in the path of contamination. As it is the risk of contamination can come in through chemicals released into the water that infects plants and animals. Some of the plants are grown as crops which are harvested for food. While we slaughter livestock for meat that can become affected by the animals eating some of the plants such as grass.

The risk of food becoming infected by contaminants such as bacteria and pathogens suggests we need to restrict the impact of industrial pollutants on the environment,. Then we will be able to go back to organic based agriculture for foods.