IWMI Working Paper – 164: Consumer perceptions of fruit and vegetable quality: certification and other options for safeguarding public health in West Africa.

October 8, 2015 | By IWMI

Urban areas in developing countries have many formal and informal food chains and face diverse food-quality and -safety challenges resulting from infrastructure (e.g., cold transport and storage) and institutional capacities (e.g., for monitoring of compliance with safety standards), and legislations in general might not be able to keep pace with the dynamics of urban food demand, including changes from traditional diets to ‘fast food’, the emergence of new supply and marketing chains, as well as growing competition between food outlets with possible cuts on food safety. But the largest risk factor in developing countries is that the public sector cannot count on the consumer to be alert as educational levels are usually too basic. Several national and international reports have noted that poor hygienic practices in the home are responsible for between 30-40% of food-borne illnesses (FAO 2015).