World meat industry news

Topical issues of food security and the problem of hunger and malnutrition this year were discussed by the participants of the press conference "World Food Day: Global Food Security". The event was attended by Director of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for Liaison with the Russian Federation Oleg Kobyakov and Rector of the Moscow State University of Food Production Mikhail Balykhin.

Today, FAO's attention is focused on the following 4 areas - improving production, nutrition quality, the state of the environment and, on the basis of this, ensuring a better quality of life for the world's population, said Oleg Kobyakov, Director of the FAO Office for Communication with the Russian Federation.

According to the annual report of FAO and partner organizations, the number of hungry people reached 828 million last year, the expert said. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in his World Food Day greeting, over three billion people on our planet still cannot afford healthy food. By 2030, 670 million people may live in conditions of hunger, the speaker added. “The existing negative trends of the last three years indicate that we have lost momentum and progress. Cardinal efforts will be required at the level of the international community, individual member countries to correct this situation. Now, in 20 countries or regions, including two regional centers of famine, further deterioration of the situation with food security is possible,” said Oleg Kobyakov.

It is necessary to produce more quality products using fewer resources, because the world's population will reach 9 billion by 2050, the speaker concluded. Among the results that can be achieved immediately is a significant reduction in losses from food waste. “Here, on the one hand, we are waiting for help from science and new technologies, wide introduction into agro-food chains, and, on the other hand, from the public, on broad public awareness and rational consumption,” the expert said.

We need to produce more quality products using fewer resources

Oleg Kobyakov noted that the agreement on the establishment of the Black Sea Grain Corridor, signed with the mediation of the UN, facilitates the access of the countries of the world to food and fertilizers from the Russian Federation, as well as to grain products from Russia and Ukraine, being an important step to counter the global food crisis. The UN and FAO are convinced that this initiative contributed to the stabilization of world food prices, increasing its physical and economic accessibility, primarily in the Mediterranean region, the Middle East, and North Africa, the speaker concluded.

The events of a number of recent years are fundamentally changing the entire paradigm and concept of attitude to food resources, said Mikhail Balykhin, rector of MGUPP. The whole ecosystem is radically changing, a great emphasis is placed on the population's access to products and social aspects, he specified. “In this situation, we must make rather drastic decisions, because now, more than ever, specialists in the field of agricultural, food and biotechnologies are among the most relevant and in demand on the market,” the speaker said. He identified three key trends on the global agenda. “The first is the global issue of food security, the quality of nutrition, poverty reduction and ensuring an equal level of access for the world's population to food resources. This is the main trend, the main challenge within which MGUPP has been developing for the last decades,” said the rector. In this regard, the university is developing very actively: on the one hand, the university creates conditions for the mass training of high-tech personnel, and on the other hand, point laboratory complexes that allow solving important tasks of high-level science, the speaker concluded. The second task, in addition to ensuring the quantity of food, is its quality, he noted.

The events of recent years are fundamentally changing the paradigm and concept of attitude to food resources.

“We must start with rational, conscious consumption, rational production, cost reduction, preservation of the maximum amount of raw materials and products - this is one of the most important scientific areas to which we pay great attention. And there are two extremes. On the one hand, these are high processing technologies, when we reach the level of using up to one hundred percent of raw materials in food production. On the other hand, it is a functional approach to nutrition, personalized nutrition, and affordable. We are trying to group the population into certain categories and select the best technologies to ensure the highest quality of products, to achieve a situation where nutrition becomes partly a medicine,” said Mikhail Balykhin. The third trend is also very important, he noted. The motto of the FAO WHO is that not a single person on the planet should be left without attention, the speaker recalled. “As part of our policy, we will reformulate it this way: the food industry is extremely social, because it concerns everyone, not a single person will live a day without food and water, and everyone needs medical care,” he said. The university combines these aspects, starting with veterinary support, with veterinary control, the rector added. In addition, we need a personal approach to each person, social lifts, in particular the possibility of using food technologies to solve global social problems, including poverty - a person may not have sufficient well-being, but if he is fed and dressed, then he is in a comfort zone he explained. In this regard, a university development strategy was recently approved, which was approved by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science and the Government of the Russian Federation as part of the Priority 2030 program, which included only 50 universities, including MGUPP, Mikhail Balykhin noted.

“We proposed, I believe, a unique program for the development of humanitarian, social and food ecosystems in the cities of the country - the Biocity project, which should become a program for the development of our cities, taking into account all modern technologies not only for food production, but also for processing in general. These are frontier reserves in the field of food and nutrition for people, which are based on the principles of health saving. The first sample will be built on the territory of our university. This should be a territory where all human needs will be taken into account: physical, emotional, humanitarian and, of course, food, food. This is something that, in my opinion, in our difficult time will be able to support each of us, which will ensure the quality of life and the implementation of seven of the seventeen sustainable development goals related to education, social initiatives, nutrition and health protection,” the speaker said. He also said that recently the university received the approval of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science to assign a new status - renaming MGUPP into the Russian Biotechnological University (ROSBIOTEKH). “This is a new milestone in the development of the university, of course, taking into account its entire ninety-year history in the field of food technology, but also with a reserve for the future, because today food technology and biotechnology are inseparable,” summed up the rector.

The special operation in Ukraine, as well as various armed conflicts in a number of countries around the world, exacerbate the already difficult world situation, since Russia and Ukraine are among the world's largest breadbaskets, producers of basic agricultural grains and oilseeds, are key exporters of agricultural products, leading suppliers of food products and fertilizers, the speaker noted.

The expert listed the actions to be taken in the main areas that are directly related to the strategic objectives of FAO member countries. He noted the need to invest in the most needy countries (first of all), which are often both large producers and the largest consumers of food. In order to increase the availability of food, more space should be given to local production, the speaker explained. For example, only 8% of the total funding allocated to ensure food security in emergency situations is currently directed to support agricultural production. Of course, in a crisis, lack of physical and economic access to food, the population must first of all be fed by solving the problem of hunger, but in the long term, the task of ensuring food security can only be solved by investment in agricultural production, the development of innovations and new technologies, the expert concluded. He focused on the need to strengthen transparency and coordination of markets (to stabilize prices in the domestic and world markets), to ensure the most efficient use of manufactured goods and production resources. And also - he noted the inadmissibility of politically motivated, non-economic restrictive measures.