Strengthening global food safety through One Health collaboration

Strengthening global food safety through One Health collaboration between SLU & ILRI

Building on 50 years of experience in animal health research across Africa and Asia, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) collaborates with national and international partners, including SLU, on One Health projects aimed at preventing and controlling foodborne diseases, zoonoses, emerging infectious diseases, and antimicrobial resistance. In this context, we meet Ms Trang Le, a PhD student at the Department of Animal Biosciences (HBIO), who visited SLU in October 2024. Her PhD research is a collaboration between HBIO (SLU) and ILRI in Hanoi. It focuses on implementing simple interventions to improve food safety at small- to medium-scale pig slaughterhouses and traditional markets in Vietnam.

Hi Trang, who are you? Can you tell us something about your research?

My name is Trang Le, and I am from Vietnam. My bachelor's background is in public health from Hanoi University of Public Health, and I hold a dual Master’s degree in One Health Risk Assessment at Kasetsart University, Thailand and Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Toulouse, France, 2018. I have been a Research Officer in food safety and One Health at the (ILRI) since 2019, supporting research projects related to One Health, food safety, and AMR topics. I started my PhD Graduate Fellowship at ILRI under the Animal and Human Health Program in 2022. I registered as a PhD student at the Department of Animal Biosciences at SLU in April 2023. My PhD project is about conducting simple interventions to improve food safety at small- and medium-scale pig slaughterhouses and traditional markets in Vietnam.

Image description: Pork is usually transported from slaughterhouse to market by motorbike in the early morning. Photo credit: Sinh Dang/ILRI

Could you tell us more about the One Health initiative at ILRI? 

The CGIAR Initiative on One Health (OHI) is one of 33 research initiatives being implemented by CGIAR. It aims to demonstrate how One Health principles and tools integrated into food systems can help reduce and contain zoonotic disease outbreaks, improve food and water safety, and reduce anti-microbial resistance, benefiting human, animal and environmental health. The OHI is being implemented by five work packages in seven countries, including Vietnam. More information about The CGIAR Research Initiative on One Health.

What is your research about, and how does it relate to One Health?

The overall goal of my PhD project is to provide evidence on the effects of interventions along the pork value chain in Vietnam, using a One Health approach.

This food safety intervention will explore the critical assumptions that cause interventions to succeed or fail, to draw widely applicable lessons and to inform innovations that can be scaled. Promising approaches might include slaughterhouses (small- to medium-scale) metal grids to avoid floor slaughtering, separating ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ areas, and interactive training on good hygiene practices to improve the adoption of improved practices. On a market level, we also explore potential incentives for behavioural change, such as peer pressure or consumer demand, information, and market forces as drivers of sustainable improvement.

We collaborate with authorities and partners to integrate innovative initiatives into food safety programs and scale them up. We have called for partnerships with key stakeholders, including universities, ministries (animal health workers, food safety authorities), and private sector entities along the pig supply chain, such as market managers, slaughterhouses, and retailers.

How can your research contribute to a more sustainable world – what impact can the results have at a societal level?

Through this work, our final aim is to reduce the burden of food-borne disease. The program will test our hypotheses that working with a small number of actors (vendors in markets who are primarily women, slaughterhouse workers) at critical control points can improve safety for millions of consumers and that interventions will be effective if they create an enabling regulatory environment and a strong incentive for behavioural change. We expect further important recommendations for a safer food system in Vietnam and similar contexts.