In May, Queen’s University Belfast, Université Laval and safefood, hosted the inaugural Belfast Summit on Global Food Integrity which attracted over 600 delegates from 47 countries to the Waterfront Hall over four days. The Summit was a great success, with a lively line-up of plenary and keynote speakers, workshops, EU project meetings and spinoff events.
Speakers from the United Nations, Pepsico, World Wildlife Fund and research centres like Wageningen gave us thoughtprovoking insights – like how anti-microbial resistance (AMR) is likely to be a bigger public health threat than cancer by 2050. Or that 96% of all mammals left in the world are farmed animals, with the remaining 4% of wildlife squeezed into smaller and smaller areas of forest. And how it’s all connected. Biodiversity (or lack of), climate change, geopolitics, pollution, terrorism, Brexit, agriculture – they all have a direct impact on our global food supply system.
However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. A central message to come out of the Summit is that there’s still time to turn things around with some creativity, focus and action. But the action needs to be now. To that end, the next step is to funnel the outcomes of the Summit into clear recommendations and then feed these back into the regulatory organisations which participated in the Summit so policy can be influenced at the highest levels.
Delegates also found time to have some fun during the event too. Television scientist, Dr Marty Jopson injected some timely light-heartedness at the safefood Knowledge Network event; the high quality of food produced in Northern Ireland was showcased at a pop-up market; and delegates enjoyed some home-grown music and craic at a gala dinner at the Titanic Visitor Centre. For further post-summit updates and additional images please check the website www.asset2018.eu/News
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