Farmers must become more aware of food risk and perceptions of what they do, one of the country’s most eminent voices of food safety told a recent conference.

Speaking at the European Pig Producers (EPP) congress in Dublin last week, Professor Paddy Wall of University College Dublin (UCD) said that farmers must always be cognisant of the fact that food risk perceptions can do lasting damage to their enterprise.

“There is a perception out there that small is good and big is evil (when it comes to farms) and we certainly cannot afford a food scare. That’s why we have to be so, so careful with animal welfare and biosecurity on our farms… primary agriculture output is under attack in the mainstream media,” Professor Wall told the 400 pig producers from across the continent who attended the 26th EPP congress.

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Professor Wall said that all farmers must take a more proactive stance on delivering standards of food production that ensures a safe food product for humans.

“Food is the fundamental fuel for humans. Human nutrition is key. You’re all (farmers) in the human health business; that’s the endgame here. Farmers all need to realise that they are producing food for human consumption – that’s where we need to be,” Prof Wall said.

“The future is looking good as long as we can avoid adverse publicity associated with food scares. We don’t want food safety scares, we don’t want issues with animal welfare, that people perceive that products are unhealthy or that there’s an environmental impact… these are four things which we have to manage.”

The pig sector is on the frontline when contending with the increasing risk of resistance to antibiotics. Germs resistent to multiple antibiotics are increasingly being found with concerns that untreatable germs will emerge.

“Antibiotics are becoming a big concern for many, including food service giants like McDonald’s. They are promising to seek antibiotic-free supply chains which will present huge challenges for some of the pig sector. Biosecurity will have to be scaled up and antibiotics can no longer be used as a substitute for good husbandry,” Wall stressed.

“The pig sector is taking a lot of flak, especially on the whole issue of antibiotics. Antibiotics are becoming a big, big concern for everybody and antibiotics has become a bad word with the consumer,” Professor Wall said, before adding that the developments in laboratory testing mean that there will be “more and more” product recalls as a result of “microbial contamination” as well as chemical contaminations in food.

All of what Prof Wall was discussing was based on delivering a message of the necessity of food production being of the right standards and qualities for humans consuming the food. Prof Wall said not all countries’ capabilities for surveillance and for overseeing the food chain are the same, and standards across the globe are not uniformly enforced as stringently as they are in Ireland.

“We’re here in the European Union and we have harmonised food legislation but we don’t harmonise enforcement. Some countries are better at enforcing the rules than others and some countries in the European Union are in the depths of a recession and they don’t have the public infrastructure to carry out surveillance or proper enforcement,” Wall said, before adding that there are some countries within Europe that “if they were outside the EU, they wouldn’t be allowed to import here”.

“Doctors, they’re sickness professionals. Farmers are the health professionals. One message I want you to take from this conference and when you leave Ireland and people ask what business you’re in, you’re not pig farmers any more, you’re in the human health business because if you get it wrong then people are going to get sick,” Professor Wall said.