ABSTRACT
Food systems are central to pandemic threats and impacts. This chapter traces key pathways through which our current food systems contribute to disease outbreaks which then spread to become pandemics. It focuses particularly on how food production and marketing involving animals, both livestock and wildlife, can enhance the spillover and transmission of zoonotic diseases, and the importance of understanding and addressing these interactions to pandemic prevention. It then considers the roles of food systems in shaping the health, social and economic impacts of epidemics and pandemics, often with devastating effects on vulnerable groups. This chapter thus argues that to head off future pandemic threats and protect the societal health and well-being of populations when they do occur, food system transformation is vital. One health approaches offer valuable ways forward, but need to embrace food systems more fully, better integrate the various dimensions of preparedness and response and have care, equity and justice at their hearts.
