Beyond calories: climate-change threats to food safety and nutrition in UK food systems debate

This debate examines how climate change presents complex and compounding challenges to food safety and nutrition within food systems in the United Kingdom. It highlights that risks extend far beyond calories, as environmental hazards such as extreme heat, humidity, drought, flooding, and rising CO₂ levels interact in ways that amplify microbial growth, drive mycotoxin outbreaks, introducing pests, pathogens and microbes to crops and livestock, as well as diluting the micronutrient content of staple crops and altering the nutritional quality and diversity of diets. The overlapping pressures pose a challenge to existing risk assessment models, which were developed in such a way that they handle single hazards at a time. Recent evidence indicates that the compound effect of multiple stressors may destabilize health outcomes, trade systems, and economic stability, as well as exacerbate health inequalities. This necessitates new approaches to food governance and collaboration with food system actors. To address that, this paper recommends the incorporation of climate-hazard tiers into regular food safety checks, revision of food-based dietary guidelines and surveillance systems to incorporate the threat of nutrient dilution of food systems, and investment in predictive analytics, such as AI applications and satellite observations, to forecast food safety crises in the region and globally. It also suggests a compromise between decarbonizing the cold chain and microbiological safety, as well as supporting calls to expand the National Risk Register to consider nutrient security risks, as well as food-borne disease, in times of disaster. This Debate asks how UK food-safety and nutrition governance should evolve in light of compound climate hazards that simultaneously influence microbial risks, mycotoxin pressures and nutritional security and recommends three immediately actionable steps: introduce a climate-hazard tiering approach, deploy predictive analytics for horizon scanning, and validate cold-chain set-points under climate stress.