This was the main message delivered by South East Asia Food and Agricultural Science and Technology. (SEAFAST) Senior Scientist and former Codex Alimentarius Vice President Prof. Dr. Purwiyatno Hariyadi to the floor at the recent Fi Asia Conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.

He urged for food safety and relevant measures to be considered as a necessity in order for nations to achieve food security of any form.

"Without food safety, there can be no food security because there can essentially be no food if it is not safe to eat - this makes food safety a prerequisite of food security,", ​he said.

"The fact is that food safety has major impacts with health concerns being the main one but also negatively affecting the economy and trade relationships.​

"We also need to recognise that climate change is in fact accelerating the food safety issue [especially in markets like Asia] as temperature is a very major player in terms of exacerbating harm and many markets in this region have tropical weather."​

Based on this argument, he stressed that the alarming rate at which global mean temperatures are accelerating upwards also means that the risk of foodborne diseases are also accelerating upwards.

"The three main threats to our food supply today are microbiological hazards, chemical hazards and physical hazards, all of which are can be significantly affected by temperature and hence by climate change," ​he said.

"Looking at microbiological threats, studies have shown that salmonellosis cases in Europe have increased by 5% to 10% with every 1°C rise in weekly average temperatures, and a similar trend had been observed for Campylobacter infections as well.​

"Temperature plays such a key role here as a higher temperature provides a more  suitable environment for microbes to live and thrive in.​

"Physical hazards to our food are also affected by climate change as this will exacerbate situations like floods, droughts, storms and so on which just opens the food supply up to contamination, and us the consumers to waste, debris and direct contaminants like microplastics."​

Chemical hazards are considered to have some of the most wide ranging potential risks when it comes to contaminating the food supply, both from direct and indirect avenues.

"Toxins are one of the biggest areas of concer