Summary of the ONE SOCIETY track > opportunities and challenges

Abstract

This report summarises the main discussions, conclusions and recommendations of the ‘One Society’ track of the ‘ONE – Health, Environment & Society – Conference 2022’ (21^st–24^th June 2002; Brussels and online), which was organised by the European Food Safety Authority. The four themes in the One Society track focused on risk communication, social science, engagement, including collaboration, the EU research agenda, and open science: more specifically, their integration into our understanding of existing and emerging food safety risks within agri-food systems, and as part of the ‘One Health’ context. The conclusions suggested that understanding food safety risks within ‘One Health’ requires collaboration and co-production of risk assessment and research objectives, data, methodologies and translation into policy with all interested actors, including the general public. Furthermore, effective implementation of open science practices and inter-agency collaboration are key to ensuring that policy and governance conditions can be optimised within the context of the transdisciplinary research environment in which the ‘One Health’ concept is embedded. Among main outcomes, the ‘One Society’ track clearly highlighted the need to: i) realise the EU’s collaborative food safety knowledge ecosystem, as no single actor can master the level of complexity alone, ii) consistently apply an ‘audience-first’ approach and use participatory formats from science to policymaking; iii) dedicate resources to build bridges with research projects; and iv) make open science a reality and a ‘default’ principle for regulatory science.

Keywords:

• Social science
• One Health
• collaboration
• open science
• risk communication
• engagement

Introduction

Global food systems are inextricably linked to public health nutrition (Kanter et al. 2015; Zurek, Hebinck, and Selomane 2022) and food safety (Nordhagen et al. 2022). At the same time, agri-food production is a major driver of negative environmental impacts such as climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems (Godfray et al. 2010). Within food systems, drivers of change, as well as ‘system lock in’ and factors that act as barriers to change (Ingram, Ericksen, and Liverman 2012) have origins in both the social and natural domains (Ingram, Ericksen, and Liverman 2012). This has led to considerable discussion and recognition of the need to understanding food systems from a transdisciplinary perspective, synthesising inputs from the social and the natural sciences, although this needs to be further integrated into research funding programmes (den Boer et al. 2021). An important goal of international food security policy is to ensure the enactment of fully sustainable and secure food systems, defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as a sustainable food system which ‘delivers food security and nutrition for all in such a way that the economic, social and environmental bases to generate food security and nutrition for future generations are not compromised’ (United Nations 2015).

These are explicitly addressed in EU policy, which seeks to promote sustainable transition to change current practices in food production, processing and consumption (e.g. the EU Farm-to-Fork strategy; European Commission, 2021). Many policy documents and research programmes explicitly link food security and food safety under the umbrella the One Health concept (European Commission 2020; Garcia, Osburn, and Jay-Russell 2020). ‘One Health’ aims to improve human, animal and environmental health simultaneously, and recognises need for holistic transdisciplinary approaches to move towards safe and sustainable food systems. An example relevant to existing and emerging food safety threats is provided by example of the EU AMR One Health Network¹, which aims to bridge EU research, monitoring, risk assessment and policy on antimicrobial resistance (European Commission 2022). Inter-disciplinary and intra-disciplinary diversity is essential if effective risk assessment is to occur as part of the risk analyses process (Hartley et al. 2016).

Additional pressure in the same direction comes from the increasing need to effectively share scientific outcomes, methods, and data. An open science approach can help tackling some of the big challenges faced by the EU organisations including those related to the transition towards a more sustainable food system. As acknowledged by EU policy, opening up science can help accelerating innovation in science and technology, and increasing societal trust due to wider public scrutiny (European Council 2022). Having data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, as promoted by the FAIR movement, (Wilkinson et al. 2016) is critical to address emerging issues.

In the context of transdisciplinary research focused on the prevention and mitigation of emerging and existing food safety risks, communication, and engagement play an important role. This role was explored within the ‘One Society’ track of the ‘ONE – Health, Environment & Society – Conference 2022’ (21^st -24^th June 2002; Brussels and online). The conference was organised by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) together with its partner agencies – the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) – as well as the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, with the ambition to embrace the One Health approach to ensure more integrated, transdisciplinary and collaborative health assessments. The four themes in the One Society track focused on risk communication, social science, engagement, including collaboration, the EU research agenda and open science; more specifically their integration into our understanding of existing and emerging food safety risks within agri-food systems, and as part of the ‘One Health’ context. These themes were organised around four thematic sessions:

• Putting science into context: the future of social science in risk analysis

• Advancing engagement in an evolving food safety ecosystem: opportunities and challenges

• Making a difference: bridging EU research and policy

• Turning open science into practice: causality as a showcase

The main points and resulting recommendations are now summarised in this report. More details about the outcomes of the conference are reported in Devos et al. (2022a, 2022b) and Bronzwaer et al. (2022).

The full programme of the conference, speaker and poster abstracts, presentations/slides, video recordings and interviews with leading experts, including representatives of EFSA’s partner agencies and JRC, are publicly available at the conference website (https://www.one2022.eu/) and/or EFSA’s YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/EFSAchannel/videos).

Putting science into context: the future of social science in risk analysis

A question that has been debated extensively in the regulatory arena over the past decade is how social sciences can be used to integrate societal aspects into risk analysis. Science and policy are witnessing a paradigm shift, marked by the inclusion of societal contributions into policymaking and the growing importance of coordinated risk communication. Therefore, the thematic session ‘Putting science into context: the future of social science in risk analysis’ explored: (1) how social sciences can provide a societal perspective to – and stimulate the participation of diverse population groups in, risk analysis, and how such insights can help explain complex scientific concepts through innovative risk communication; and (2) what are the implications of technology on communication in the digital age and the underlying social research. Ultimately, the session attempted to contribute to the ongoing debate by making as case for why and how the use of social sciences will be crucial to remain relevant in the changing One Health environment.

Social science has been included in the process of food safety risk analysis since the late 1990s, where the focus has been on developing effective risk communication strategies based on people’s concerns and priorities, as well as technical risk assessments. The definition of ‘Risk Communication’ frequently considered by governments and inter-governmental organisations is that used within the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which includes communication with all stakeholders, including citizens and consumers (see, inter alia, FAO/WHO, 1997). The principles of effective food safety risk communication have been widely adopted by practitioners (see FAO/WHO, 2016). EFSA has subsequently conducted a scoping review of social research studies and official reports in relation to food safety risk communication, which has identified current best practice as well as identifying knowledge gaps and research needs (e.g. tackling misinformation and disinformation in the age of digital communication, the role of understanding risk perceptions, and tools, channels and mechanisms for coordinated risk communications) (EFSA et al., 2021).

Future directions for social science in risk analysis can be identified, which build on these established achievements. First, there is a need to ensure that research into behavioural insights, defined as an inductive approach to policy making that combines insights from psychology, cognitive science, and social science with empirically tested results to understanding choices (OECD, 2019). Behavioural insights are highly relevant to understanding people’s behaviours in relation to food safety risks, for example in relation to farm management decision regarding disease detection, food preparation practices throughout supply chains (including within the domestic environment), consumer food choices, or responses to changes in the food system, such as emerging disease risk (Hilaire et al. 2022) or technological innovation in primary production or processing (Frewer 2017).

A case of effective communication was provided by Sudhanshu Sarronwala (Infarm, www.infarm.com, 2022), who provided an example of communicating with the public about innovations in vertical agriculture, where the application of fully circular, sustainable farming system delivers benefits to human health and the environment (see also Zaręba, Krzemińska, and Kozik 2021). The importance of behavioural insights was demonstrated in terms of developing effective communication in relation to the Covid19 pandemic by John Kinsman (ECDC), where the development of effective communication strategies regarding health protective behaviours was reported to be premised on understanding people’s behaviours and underpinning beliefs, for example in relation to vaccination (de Bruin et al. 2022). Although there is widespread recognition of the importance of behavioural insights in relation to interventions promoting behavioural change (including in relation to food safety risk), it was concluded that behavioural insights research must be formally institutionalised and embedded in national and regional risk preparedness and response activities.

An additional driver of behaviour is how people respond to risk communication via social media messaging and digital technologies more generally. Digital communication technologies have tremendous potential to facilitate effective risk communication with stakeholders, including citizens and consumers, about existing and emerging food safety threats. Digital media also provide platforms whereby citizen preferences and priorities for food policy and regulation can be communicated to decision-makers. However, some caution regarding social exclusion of vulnerable groups, who cannot access digitally transmitted communication, and ethical issues regarding data protection of individuals is needed. Measures to effectively counteract ‘fake news’ are also required (Dan et al. 2021). The challenges of effectively exploiting digital communication in risk analysis were discussed by Sander van der Linden (University of Cambridge, UK). As part of this, social science might further consider the role of heuristic processing (e.g. confirmation bias, where people look for information which confirms their existing view, see Ling 2020), and the availability heuristic, where people use information that comes to mind quickly and easily when making decisions about the future (Khan et al. 2017). Heuristics may become more relevant as social media platforms become increasingly sophisticated at targeting information to end-user interests in the digital ‘echo chamber’.

Michelle Patel (UK Food Standards Agency, www.fsa.gov.uk) presented on how digital methodologies can be used to collect social science information, for example in relation to online deliberative research and in situ, real time video and sensor monitoring of people’s behaviours (see also Overbey, Jaykus, and Chapman 2017). Digital technologies can also be used to demonstrate the potential impacts of policy changes or interventions on e.g. urban planning, and there is potential to extend these approaches to demonstrate potential food systems interventions and their plausible future impacts on landscapes, production, and food environments. Successful participatory processes using virtual reality have been applied in other areas such as urban planning (Jamei et al. 2017). As well as using social science methodologies to ensure that people adopt behaviours that protect themselves, their communities, and the environment, citizen engagement might also be achieved through the development of approaches which ensure that members of the public can engage with, and contribute to, data gathering through application of citizen science (European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) 2022). Although citizen science has been successfully used in gathering information relevant to the environment sciences (Encarnação, Teodósio, and Morais 2021; Kelly et al. 2020) and space research (Marc Kuchner, NASA Citizen Science Officer, One Conference proceedings; Odenwald 2018), application in the area of existing and emerging food safety risk identification has been infrequent (although examples exist in relation to food fraud and food allergen detection (Reynolds et al. 2021) and agricultural practices (van De Gevel, van Etten, and Deterding 2020). Involving citizens in emerging food safety risk identification through data collection is an emerging area which is potentially valuable to providing scientific evidence for policy development (Food Standard Agency, 2021). The challenge remains in relation to ensuring that diversity is represented in terms of which citizens are engaged in citizen science (Brouwer and Hessels 2019; Pateman, Dyke, and West 2021).

Advancing engagement in an evolving food safety ecosystem: opportunities and challenges

The increase in scientific complexity, changing societal expectations, new policy and strategy initiatives, and new market trends create opportunities. Yet, they also pose new challenges to the food safety ecosystem triggering the need to rethink how the actors within the ecosystem can keep our food safe, while making it more nutritious and sustainable. Finally, recent amendments to the EU Food Law introduced by the Transparency Regulation, have further prompted EFSA to integrate societal expectations for more transparency and openness in its risk assessment processes. This also allows for more comprehensive and timely scientific advice through collaboration and cooperation. The thematic session ‘Advancing engagement in an evolving food safety ecosystem: opportunities and challenges’ explored how each actor can help to address the outlined challenges to reach the overarching food safety goals of the ecosystem, taking into account individual values, needs and possible limitations, and how the ecosystem approach can directly impact on the quality of regulatory science.

Finding the right information in this complexity and finding effective ways to share data and connect expertise will define if we can continue to be successful in ensuring the safety and well-being of citizens. This is a huge challenge and makes it clear that no single organisation, not even a big one, is able to master all this complexity alone.

An initial starting point to effective knowledge exchange and coproduction is effective food safety risk communication. Jacqueline Broerse (Vrij University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) considered the need for effective food safety risk communication to continually involve interested stakeholders, including the public through the process of risk analysis to ensure that relevant knowledge, values, and concerns are integrated into risk identification, management and evaluation of successful processes (see also Klinke and Renn 2021; König et al. 2010). The overall aim of risk communication, engagement and knowledge exchange is to deliver ‘socially robust knowledge and legitimate decisions’, with which different societal actors can agree and act upon in both the development and enactment of policy, and the practice of risk communication (see also Frewer et al. 2016). However, the route to successful engagement and knowledge exchange will need to move beyond risk communication to that of co-production between stakeholders (including citizens) and the policy community in relation to setting research and policy objectives, contributing to data collection and methodological design, and translating scientific results into actionable and pragmatic policy outcomes (Kar 2016). Food safety risks also potentially represent a transboundary threat (Prasanna et al. 2022; Sundstrom et al. 2014; Wentholt et al. 2012), which requires close collaboration between institutions and actors with interests in their prevention and mitigation (Boin and Rhinard 2008).

Stakeholder involvement is an important issue – the EU Bee Partnership was presented by Noa Simon Delso, of Beelife, where coproduction and knowledge exchange activities have focused on understanding the complexity associated with protecting bees and pollinators in agricultural systems. This has involved engagement and coproduction of scientific and policy priorities with numerous NGOs, academic and societal stakeholders. An important conclusion was that ‘not listening and taking into consideration stakeholders’ views impairs trust’, which is likely to have negative impacts on societal adoption of policies in relation to the issue at hand, as well as policies and activities promoted or put into place by the institution which is distrusted (see also McCready et al. 2020). Similar conclusions were drawn by Georg Winkel in relation to mapping forest ecosystems and the development pro-environmental and productivist interventions (see also Joa, Winkel, and Primmer 2018; United Nations 2018). Forest management activities potentially offer a case study of the ‘co-evolution’ of forest ecosystems with societal needs, with explicit connectivity with changing world views and knowledge, for example in relation to different kinds of ecosystem service delivery, such as provisioning services (food, water), regulating services (wastewater treatment, pollution control), supporting services (shelter), and cultural services (recreation and tourism) (see also Binder et al. 2017)

The example of the forest ecosystem can also provide inspiration for a broader ecosystem approach to collaboration in the area of food safety. It teaches us that it is important to take the priorities, preferences, and knowledge of all stakeholders, including those held by the public, into account when considering the agri-food system, the drivers of changes to this system, the mediators of these changes, and the design of successful interventions to improve human, animal, and environmental health. Establishing methodologies to do this requires further consideration, when considering inputs from different stakeholder groups, or within different contexts (Emery, Mulder, and Frewer 2015; Hadjigeorgiou et al. 2022; Maxwell and Parker 2012). In conclusion, it is important to realise a collaborative EU food safety knowledge ecosystem and create incentives to collaborate across all stakeholder groups in order to co-produce food safety assessments, research and policy objectives, and impact pathways.

Turning open science into practice: causality as a showcase

The thematic session ‘Turning open science into practice: causality as a showcase’ offered an opportunity for sharing experiences on obstacles, benefits and the feasibility of adopting open science approaches in the context of regulatory science. The showcase example focused on causality, i.e. the relationship between a cause, such as the exposure to a substance/micro-organism/food ingredient, and an effect, such as an adverse/beneficial health outcome. With larger availability of open access data, including those gathered using high-throughput techniques, unprecedented options for deeper insights into causality have emerged. Using causality as an illustrative example, the session intended to advance the discussion on how the principles of open science can be routinely implemented in the scientific activities performed by the European institutions. The guiding question was: Can institutions benefit from open data and the open science movement, and if so, how? For instance, can participatory science accelerate finding solutions to quantitatively integrate heterogeneous sources to address causality?

There is an identified need to democratise science and the entire scientific process and make it more efficient, equitable, transparent and inclusive through adapting open science practices (Ana Persic, UNESCO, ONE conference proceedings). One conclusion is that ‘open science’ practices should become the ‘default’ science practices for any public organisation, opening up science in the food and feed regulatory context will make data available to all more quickly; enable reproducibility of scientific outcomes, including food safety assessments; increase the uptake, use and quality of scientific knowledge; promote and support research collaboration and co-creation; and foster innovation, including public participation in the scientific process via the crowdsourcing of data, methods and computational capacity and scientific knowledge (e.g. Dendler and Böl, 2021). In summary, the adoption of more participatory approaches will offer the opportunity to the EU’s ENVI Agencies to extend the pool of data, expertise and knowledge from which to draw, thus accelerating the preparedness to address complex questions (Vohland et al. 2021).

In turn, an open approach would provide a framework to enabling all the autonomous yet interdependent actors to realise a greater purpose that cannot be realised by individual actors or institutions, where coordination of activities creates a shared purpose to co-create value. The EU ‘food safety ecosystem’ has many competent actors who can bring knowledge, data, and expertise together in a mutually beneficial way. This process of collaboration will be facilitated by the integration of open science practices, where data and results can be easily shared and accessed.

During the session, the six founding principles of open science were discussed by Shani Evenstein Sigalov (University of Tel Aviv and Board of Trustees Wikimedia Foundation). Open data, open source, open methodology, open peer review, open access, open educational resources were mentioned as critical features to achieve transparency, accessibility, and co-creation of science. In the interview she also highlighted the role that citizen science can have in interlinking policy, science and society, directing research towards issues that are more pressing from a societal viewpoint. Two examples of best practice in relation to open science were provided by Lea Maitre, of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), and Marc Chadeau-Hyam of the London Imperial College who presented on the exposome concept, where all environmental exposures (meaning all non-genetic factors) that a person experiences, from conception onwards, are assessed together using a holistic analysis of the effects of environmental exposures on human health. Lea focused on the experience gained with a data challenge event, a successful initiative utilising the open science approach, where data sets on exposome were made available to the crowd that provided methods for causal association (Maitre et al. 2022). Marc discussed the value of the open access data in the UK Biobank to assess causality hypotheses (Chadeau-Hyam et al. 2020). The two examples show-cased how crowdsourcing scientific knowledge and having open data available can help answering questions that are unique and complex, as well as providing more inclusive access to scientific processes.

The challenges of open science in view of its potential enactment in a regulatory context were discussed by the session’s panellists from different angles. The legal specialist Thomas Margoni (University KU Leuven) highlighted the tension between openness of data and the need to protect confidentiality and intellectual property (Margoni 2016). He suggested having adequate competences on board since the beginning as a possible solution. The data quality expert Anastasija Nikiforova (University of Tartu and member of the Task Force Fair metrics and data quality) discussed the need to achieve an open shared data curation and maintenance with a critical mass of contributors and stressed the implications in terms of cost and open data literacy. The requirement for data and metadata standards was also identified as a possible critical issue (Nikiforova and Zuiderwijk 2022). The social scientist, Leonie Dendler (German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment) elaborated on factors that could hamper adoption of an open science approach, based on a survey conducted by her organisation: the fear that public engagement might bring potential detriment for the independence-based reputation of a regulatory organisation, concerns for quality, insufficient level of competences limiting interest in engagement (Dendler and Böl, 2021). The perspective of the EU institutions was brought in by the European Commission’s scientific officers, Sven Schade, and the session’s chair, Jean-François Dechamp, that highlighted the increasing focus of the European Institutions on the role of citizen science and open science in both the scientific and decision-making process (Shanley et al. 2019). They referred to the ‘conclusion on research assessment and implementation of open science’, adopted by the Council few weeks before the start of the EFSA Conference, stressing that ‘open science has a crucial role to play in boosting impact, quality, efficiency, transparency and integrity of research and innovation’ (European Council 2022).

Making a difference: bridging EU research and policy

To foster the transition towards a more sustainable future, substantial resources will be dedicated to research and innovation (R&I) in the coming decade. The thematic session ‘Making a difference: bridging EU research and policy’ explored the benefits of involving EFSA and its partner agencies, individually and collectively, to shape the EU research agenda, using antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a real-life case study. EU Agencies that work closely together, in research and other areas, provide the EU with more holistic answers, which are needed for our society and the environment.

It has been observed within multiple domains that to bridge EU research and policy it is important to ensure effective co-production across all stakeholders and actors, both in science and policymaking. However, to ensure that co-production is applied to link research and policy, there is a need to consider the scale, methods and outcomes and transformational potential of different initiatives, as well as identify the key actors who will take part in the coproduction process (Galende-Sánchez and Sorman 2021; Miller and Wyborn 2020). It is becoming clear that, in the area of food systems research, and the development of evidence for policy, bridges must be built through transdisciplinary engagement across research projects and activities. While this may require greater resourcing, it will ensure the evidence gathered will more easily be translated into with policy requirements. In the case of One health, for example, there is a need to apply the same approach across regulatory science and evidence gathering, and how this is included in policy processes. The process would be facilitated by cross agency planning and policy translation, for example across all those with interests in the One Health agenda.

Conclusions and recommendations

Synthesising the outcomes of the One Society track of the ‘ONE – Health, Environment & Society – Conference 2022’, it can be concluded that identifying, preventing and litigating food safety risk requires a collaborative approach, involving actors throughout the food system, from those involved primarily in production to the final food consumer. Further, strengthened collaboration is needed between scientific disciplines (in particular those classified as representing the social, economic and natural sciences) if existing and emerging food safety risks are to be identified within global, regional and national food systems (Holcomb, Palma, and Velandia 2013; Nayak and Waterson 2019).

Food safety risks are also embedded in the One Health Agenda. The spread of existing (endemic) and emerging zoonotic diseases, between animals and people, is increasing due to increased movement of people, animals, and animal products from international travel and trade, climate change and population expansion (Centre for Disease control and Prevention, 2021). Prevention and mitigation of food safety risks therefore requires collaboration between natural and social scientists, stakeholders and actors working in the environmental and veterinary domains, who may not have, to date, considered food safety to be central to their activities.

In the future, social science will need to incorporate novel participatory approaches to increase engagement by all members of society in science to policymaking. Increasing the impact of interventions on human behaviours (for example in relation to food safety behaviours in the supply chain) can occur through increased citizen engagement with the outcomes of ‘successful’ interventions, including a participatory understanding of what ‘success’ looks like. In addition, the development and impact of successful interventions can be built on understanding of human behavioural decisions and responses to the issue under consideration. Public engagement in food safety science and policy can be increased through exploitation of digital audience research methods and participatory approaches, and citizen science can contribute to identifying research and policy questions, as well as solving complex questions in relation to these questions.

In order to achieve greater collaboration, it is necessary to ensure appropriate engagement mechanisms and policy practices are put into place to realise a collaborative EU food safety knowledge ecosystem, which interacts effectively with other international and national institutions, not least because of the transboundary nature of many food risks, coupled with increased complexity of science. This can be achieved if there are incentives to collaborate. Coproduction of research and policy objectives, methods and impact pathways (at local, national, regional and global scales) is an essential part of this. It is important to recognise that engagement and coproduction within policy processes will only occur if enabling mechanisms are put into place to ensure that this happens, and that actors, stakeholders and citizens are comfortable in making a contribution. In summary, it is important to create policy and governance conditions to enable a ‘collaborative ecosystem’ to be developed, which applies an ‘audience-first’ approach to ensure all stakeholders are engaged. Activities can be overseen by a cross-agency One Health task force to advance scientific advice, at the same time providing effective governance and promoting open science and open data literacy.

Effective dissemination and sharing of data will be key to further advance food safety assessments and build societal trust. Efforts must focus on making food safety-related scientific knowledge findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable based on the FAIR principles for scientific data management and stewardship. For open data, open source, open methodology, open peer review, open access, and open educational resources to become the default approach, they must be embedded in daily risk assessment practices.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Activities within this network were presented by Valentina Rizzi (BIOMO Team, BIOHAW Unit, EFSA) at the ONE conference as an example of good practice in relation to bridging science and policy in relation to One Health. See https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/science/scientific-committee-and-panels/biohaz