The food safety problems facing the global food supply chain are both significant and varied, exacerbated by changes in the external environment, such as climate change, changes in agriculture and more. No entity can solve these challenges alone. It is only by working together that we can address these challenges effectively to ensure safe food for all. There is always more to do, and partnerships are the key to building resilient global food safety systems. That is why at Mars, we take a collaborative approach — by driving change in the most critical food safety areas, through the exchange of scientific and technological insight, as well as building capability — for the benefit of all.

Committed to driving action on food safety

Our vision is a global systems approach, where regulators, academia, industry partners and nongovernmental organizations come together to share relevant data and critical insights to develop the latest scientific capabilities to protect the supply chain and the people and businesses that rely on it.

That’s why we established the Mars Global Food Safety Center (GFSC) in 2015. One of five research institutes at Mars, the Mars GFSC acts as a global and virtual hub for food safety research, collaboration, knowledge sharing and education. Since its formation, the Mars GFSC has dedicated its resources to increasing understanding of key food safety challenges, fostering collaboration and helping raise food safety standards on a global scale in three critical areas of food safety research: microbial risk management, mycotoxin risk management, and food integrity risk management, including food fraud.

Collaboration with experts around the world is key, ensuring all efforts are maximized. It’s why we engage with leading organizations, such as USAID, a leading U.S. government agency that works to end extreme global poverty and enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential. In 2019, Mars and USAID signed a global Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) declaring a shared commitment to collaborate, share knowledge and coinvest across areas to help strengthen global food systems, such as food safety, climate change and farmer livelihoods.

Partnership in action: combating mycotoxins in Nepal 

One example of how partnerships can drive real change is some of the work conducted by the USAID-funded Feed the Future Innovation Lab for the Reduction of Post-Harvest Loss (PHLIL), established in 2014. Through a global collaboration between Kansas State University, the Nepal Development Research Institute, Tribhuvan University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a whole collective of partners, Nepali stakeholders and the Mars GFSC, the mycotoxin laboratory at the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) was created. Four years on, it has made significant strides toward advancing our capabilities in identifying the causes of contamination of a particular type of mycotoxin, known as aflatoxin, in the Nepalese diet. The more that can be learned about the root causes of aflatoxin contamination and the conditions under which aflatoxigenic fungi thrive, the better equipped practitioners will be to develop innovative solutions to eliminate deadly toxins from the food supply chain.

Raising awareness to drive change

We believe that by fostering key collaborations and partnerships along the whole of the supply chain we can drive the breakthroughs in science and technology required to build resilience against mycotoxin contamination. This Food Safety Month we encourage all those in the supply chain — consumers, businesses and governments alike — to work together to combat common food safety challenges and help ensure safe food for all.

Learn more about the NAST mycotoxin lab.

Extract taken from PHLIL:

“The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for the Reduction of Post-Harvest Loss conducted a mycotoxin assessment across the Feed the Future Zone of Influence in Nepal to determine the prevalence of various types of mycotoxins in the food and feed supply. National partners from the Nepal Development Research Institute, Tribhuvan University and the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) collaborated with Helen Keller International to deploy the surveys. An intensive national stakeholder workshop was held in 2019, which considered project findings and articulated short-, medium- and long-term intervention strategies to reduce mycotoxins in the Nepal food supply.

“The project established national research capacity. A high throughput, widely usable mycotoxin analysis lab was established at NAST with core funding sustaining the lab beyond the project lifespan, as a collaborative effort across project partners and the Mars Global Food Safety Center. The lab is relatively low cost, serves the Nepali research community broadly and provides the blueprint to deploy similar labs in other Feed the Future countries and beyond.”