Integrating food safety, food security, and sustainability

Food safety must move beyond binary compliance toward an integrated, risk-based approach that transparently defines appropriate levels of protection and balances safety with sustainability, equity, and trade objectives to enable resilient and secure food systems transformation, argues Steve Wearne, former chairperson of the Codex Alimentarius Commission.  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25453/plabs.31771396

Published on March 17th, 2026

The imperative for food risk analysis integration 

The United Nations Food Systems Summit (1) and its subsequent stocktakes remind us that transforming food systems requires us all to work together. We need a pragmatic, integrated, and risk-based approach to food safety risk analysis that supports broader food systems transformation, delivers equitable global trade, and contributes to food security and sustainable food systems.  

However, current regulatory practice often relies on binary compliance thresholds that mask the continuous nature of risk and limit transparent discussion of proportionate and balanced regulatory intervention. Policymakers should move toward a more explicit articulation of appropriate levels of protection, incorporate structured trade-off assessment into decision-making, and align domestic and multilateral approaches to avoid regulatory asymmetries and perverse regulatory outcomes. Embedding food safety within broader One Health and agrifood transformation strategies will reduce unintended consequences and support equitable global trade. Clearer risk governance, grounded in evidence and transparency, is not a dilution of safety standards; it is a prerequisite for achieving food systems that are simultaneously safe, secure, and sustainable. 

In this context, the Frontiers in Science lead article by Wiedmann et al. (2), which calls for trade-off risk assessment to ensure food safety measures are proportionate and focused on the most significant risks, is timely and well aligned. For policymakers, this requires clearer articulation of acceptable risk and more transparent balancing of food safety with sustainability, equity, and trade objectives.   

Moving beyond the current food safety narrative 

To make this shift toward an integrated risk-based approach, we must move beyond the prevailing narrative in which food safety is mapped in an overly simplistic way onto binary regulatory compliance. If levels fall below compliance limits, food is considered “safe” and is allowed into the food supply; if levels exceed those limits, it is considered “unsafe” and excluded.  We need to recognize that food safety is a continuous function. 

This does not mean that established risk analysis frameworks should be abandoned, nor that well-developed approaches for assessing specific attributes of food components should be replaced.  We need to recognize how much has been invested in these frameworks and the high-quality decision-making they support.  It does mean that a richer discussion is needed among policymakers, risk assessors, risk managers, and the public regarding the dimensions of food safety and its relationship to broader food policy objectives. 

Making “Appropriate Level of Protection” work in practice 

Central to risk-based food safety is the principle that risk levels depend not only on intrinsic hazard characteristics but also on real-world conditions of exposure, including how much is consumed, by whom, and under what circumstances.  Once mitigated by appropriate risk management measures, the remaining risk can then be compared with a predetermined “Appropriate Level of Protection” (ALOP).  Critically, ALOP, established by risk managers and informed by practical and socioeconomic factors, is a value judgment and not solely a scientific determination. 

Although simple and elegant as a theoretical concept, ALOP has proven complicated to implement. Evidence suggests that World Trade Organization members often describe their ALOP in broad and subjective terms, such as a “high” or “conservative” level of protection, a “very low” level of risk, or the “prevention” of disease or pest entry (3). A more transparent and graduated articulation of ALOP by policymakers, situating food safety gains within the context of other food system objectives, could support a progressive pathway toward integration.  Such an approach should reflect both the practical realities of incremental improvements in food safety and the evolving balance between risks and other food system attributes as regulatory requirements tighten and food control systems improve over time.  

To illustrate this point, consider Brazil’s comprehensive approach to reducing fumonisins levels in maize over the past 30 years (4).  Maize production can be constrained by fungal disease. Fumonisins are toxic secondary metabolites produced by Fusarium fungi that accumulate in the field or in stored grains under certain conditions.  At certain levels, fumonisins render feed and food products unacceptable because of their potential toxic effects. The incremental introduction and enforcement of controls in Brazil was accompanied by rapid and sustained reductions in mean fumonisin levels in both processed and unprocessed maize, such that levels in 2001–2005 were around half the limits set in corresponding international Codex standards.  However, the annual export value of Brazilian maize did not exceed US$100 million until 2012, and US$250 million until a decade later.  Arguably, the significant and resource-intensive public health gains that had been realized by the early years of this millennium—evidenced by a reduction in probable fumonisin intake among Brazilian adults from 1.2 µg/kg of body weight/day (1991–1995) to 0.34 µg/kg body weight/day (2001–2005)—were not rewarded in terms of increased trade for a decade or more (4).  A more clearly defined ALOP framework, however, might have assessed whether the incremental reductions in fumonisin levels in Brazilian maize, combined as necessary with supplementary risk-management measures (e.g., targeted testing, processing requirements, or enhanced traceability), could have delivered an appropriate level of protection in importing countries, thereby maintaining public health protection while reducing food waste and facilitating global trade. 

In addition to sustaining domestic political will, more structured discussion of ALOP in multilateral forums such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission, recognizing it as a legitimate component of risk assessment policy, could help mitigate the negative impacts of asymmetrical regulatory alignment. This is particularly important, as in the example above, for producers in the Global South engaged in North–South trade agreements. 

Next steps  

Food security cannot be achieved without food safety. Nutrition remains essential, but where foodborne illness prevails, people cannot fully benefit from the food they consume.  

Measures intended to improve other aspects of the food system may unintentionally compromise food safety unless it is fully integrated into One Health and agrifood system transformation. When agricultural products are not fit for consumption, livelihoods cannot improve and food systems will fail. 

The challenge now is to move from aspirational and hortatory statements toward developing, consolidating, and implementing concrete food safety policies and tools grounded in integrated thinking. This shift could begin through structured reviews of existing standards, integration of cross-sector data into risk assessment processes, and clearer documentation of how public health gains are weighed against wider system impacts in regulatory decision-making.  The overall goal remains risk management solutions that protect consumers while supporting broader food systems transformation. 

Integrative structures and approaches that help us make sound decisions and take effective action should: 

• have a clear conceptual foundation; 

• be informed by evidence-based assessments, supported by data-driven and evidence-based technologies (e.g., predictive and quantitative modeling, AI-based learning models), rather than assertion and supposition;  

• begin at the national level, in the absence of established multilateral bodies with an appropriate remit; 

• engage all food system stakeholders and the public; 

• ensure transparency in risk management decisions comparable to the transparency achieved in food safety risk assessment. 

Considerable challenges remain in realizing such structures and approaches. We need to understand this as a program of public policy change (5), requiring: 

• construction of a coherent and resonating policy frame; 

• formulation of clear policy goals; 

• engagement across relevant sectors and levels, including governments, intergovernmental organizations, academia, producers, private sector actors, and civil society; 

• definition of what constitutes effective policy integration; and 

• design of a consistent and mutually reinforcing mix of policy instruments. 

As highlighted by Wiedmann et al. (2), a proportionate, trade-off–based approach to risk management offers a more constructive path forward. The alternative is to reinforce binary, compliance-oriented thinking, which is a well-trodden path, but it will not deliver enduring food systems transformation. 

Copyright statement 

Copyright: © 2026 [author(s)]. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in Frontiers Policy Labs is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.  

Generative AI statement 

The author declared that no generative AI was used in the creation of this manuscript. 

References

1. United Nations. Food Systems Summit 2021–about the summit. [online] (2021). Available at: www.un.org/en/food-systems-summit/about 

2. Wiedmann M, Sunil S, Moreno-Switt AI, Vongkamjan K, Johler S. Balancing food safety and sustainability: trade-off risk assessment and predictive modeling. Front Sci (2026) 4:1720772. doi: 10.3389/fsci.2026.1720772 

3. Rovnov Y. Appropriate level of protection: the most misconceived notion of WTO law. Eur J Int Law (2020) 31(4):1343–1377 

4. de Oliveira Rocha L, Hiromi Taniwaki M, Ennis M, Lindner Shreiner L, El Haffar F. Reducing fumonisin contamination in Brazilian maize: the impact of Codex standards and regulatory frameworks. Food Res Int (2024) 197(2):115280. doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2024.115280 

5. Candel JJL, Pereira L. Towards integrated food policy: main challenges and steps ahead. Environ Sci Policy (2017) 73:89–92. doi: 10.1016/j.envsci.2017.04.010