Fault lines in food system governance exposed: reflections from the listeria outbreak in South Africa

ABSTRACT

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), South Africa recently experienced the largest ever recorded outbreak of listeria (Listeria monocytogenes), with almost 1049 confirmed cases and 209 deaths between 1 January 2017 and 5 June 2018. South Africa’s listeria outbreak provides an opportunity to interrogate the relative power of the state and the private sector in shaping the food system and to re-evaluate the issues of traceability and broader governance. It also provides an opportunity to consider the determinants of diets and consequent health outcomes of the poor, and to develop policy and programmatic inventions better attuned to the lives of the poor and aligned for the creation of health.

KEYWORDS:

• Listeria
• food system
• food insecurity
• diet
• determinants
• outbreak
• South Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Development Research Centre [108458].

Notes on contributors

Jo Hunter-Adams

Jo Hunter-Adams, MPH, PhD, is postdoctoral research fellow at the Health Economics Unit, School of Public Health and Family Medicine, University of Cape Town. She is a qualitative public health researcher with an interest in the intersections between changing food systems, health and social inequality. Jo is particularly interested in understanding global food systems through local, participatory research. She is part of the Nourishing Spaces project, focused on understanding food and non-communicable disease at the urban scale in six African cities. 

Jane Battersby

Jane Battersby, PhD, is an urban geographer by training and is  a senior researcher at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town. Her current areas of particular interest are urban food systems, urban food policies. She is actively engaged in international, national, provincial and local government policy process, having acted in an advisory or consultative position at these levels. She is the PI of the Nourishing Spaces project, and is the 2017 Premio Daniel Carasso Laureate.

Tolu Oni

Tolu Oni, MBBS MRCP MPH (Epi) DFPH FCPHM(SA) MD (Res) is a Clinical Senior Research Associate at University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on understanding the interaction between commonly co-occurring chronic conditions (HIV, TB, non-communicable diseases (NCD)), upstream health determinants, the unplanned urban environment, and the impact on health outcomes; with a view to developing integrated inter sectoral public health interventions. She has received several awards in recognition of her research contribution including the Carnegie Corporation “Next Generation of African Academics” award, the Claude Leon Merit award, the UCT College of Fellows Young Researchers awards; and was a 2015 Next Einstein Forum Fellow.