EatSafe: Evidence & Action Towards Safe Food is a five-year project of Feed the Future (FTF), funded by USAID. This project aims to enable lasting improvements in the safety of nutritious foods in informal markets in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) with its critical focus on the consumer. Leads on this project implement and test interventions to substantially improve food safety, working with vendors and creating consumer demand for safe nutritious foods. The interventions are gender-sensitive and developed based on existing evidence and the generation of new knowledge on what influences food safety in informal markets.

EatSafe has three main goals:

• Consolidate and generate knowledge and evidence about consumer values and perceptions related to food safety, gender roles and norms that may influence food-safety-related behavior among consumers, vendors and other actors in the supply chain, and quantified food safety risks in informal markets.
• Develop and test tools for consumers and market vendors to communicate about and/or reduce food safety risks.
• Generate evidence on how to engage and empower consumers to demand safe, nutritious foods.

The project will be implemented in two phases in each country:

• Phase 1—Building the foundation for success: Consolidate evidence, fill context-specific knowledge gaps, and test innovative consumer- and vendor-facing tools to create demand and reduce risk.

• Phase 2—Gathering new knowledge and evidence to inform future programming: Implement a series of experimental interventions to generate new evidence on how to engage with and empower consumers to demand safe, nutritious foods.

EatSafe is led by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), in partnership with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Pierce Mill Entertainment and Education (PME).

The vision for EatSafe is to expand as a multi-country project, aligning specific countries with concurrent USAID missions in that region, as well as other local stakeholders. Specific activities packages, as well as focus value chains and geographies, will vary by country and will be defined in close consultation with USAID, local government and other local stakeholders. Currently, EatSafe is fully staffed and operating with Mission concurrence in Nigeria. EatSafe’s COVID-19 response market-based activities are functional in four additional countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Bangladesh).

For additional information, please contact:

Bonnie McClafferty, EatSafe Project Director Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)
[email protected]

Caroline Smith DeWaal, EatSafe Deputy Director Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN)
[email protected]

Lourdes Martinez-Romero, Agricultural Economist (USAID)
[email protected]

Nika Larian, Food System Advisor (USAID)
[email protected]