Climate change measures designed to reduce emissions from agriculture will need to pass rigorous food safety checks as their use expands, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has warned.
In new guidance published this week, the FAO said chemical tools aimed at reducing methane from livestock and nitrogen losses from soil cannot be widely adopted unless there is clear evidence that the residues do not enter the food chain.
report [PDF] and accompanying technology briefs are aimed at policymakers, regulators, and supply chain decision makers as governments and industry seek ways to scale up food production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental inhibitors are substances intended to reduce methane emissions from cattle and other livestock or to improve nitrogen efficiency when fertilizers are applied to land. Its use is increasing as part of climate mitigation strategies.
This includes methane-reducing feed additives such as Bovaer, which are based on the active ingredient 3-nitrooxypropanol. In the UK and Europe, Arla is running on-farm trials for Bovaer as it looks for ways to reduce the carbon footprint of milk production.
FAO, in its publication Environmental Inhibitors in Agricultural Products Systems – Considerations for Food Safety Risk Assessment, said that the potential for migration of residues into food needs to be carefully assessed to avoid risks to human health and possible trade disruption.
This guidance focuses on two major groups of inhibitors. One concerns methane production inhibitors administered to ruminants to reduce methane produced during digestion.
The second is nitrogen inhibitors applied to soils to improve fertilizer efficiency and reduce nitrogen losses and nitrous oxide emissions from crop production.
FAO said regulatory oversight of these substances is currently fragmented, with different data requirements applied in different regions depending on whether the product is classified as a veterinary drug, feed additive or soil treatment agent.
Corinna Hawkes, Director of FAO’s Agri-Food Systems and Food Safety Division, said climate action needs to be carefully adopted.
“It is essential to apply a food safety perspective when introducing new practices and technologies to agricultural products systems,” she said.
“By considering food safety first, we can ensure that efforts to reduce environmental impact are effective, trusted and well understood.”
The group said a more harmonized global approach was needed, supported by scientific advice from international expert committees that underpin food safety standards set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
FAO said future approval and wider use of environmental inhibitors will depend on solid evidence showing how these substances behave in animals, soil and crops, and whether residues can be safely eliminated from food.
