ARCED is the Data Management partner of the EatSafe project which is a five-year project of Feed the Future (FTF) and being implemented by GAIN with a view to enabling lasting improvements in the safety of nutritious foods in informal markets in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) with its critical focus on the consumer.Food safety is essential to maintain for ensuring nutrient value of food and consumers good health. In Bangladesh, majority of the people has been purchasing their foods like fish, meat, vegetables from different wet markets which have limited infrastructure to control the safety of food, including control pathogens.
In COVID time, the overall situation can take more serious turn where in traditional wet markets taking proper COVID safety measurement has been quite tough for a so densely populated city like Dhaka. For enabling the lasting improvement in the safety of nutritious foods in informal markets, it has been crucial to consolidate knowledge and evidence of food safety risks in these markets.
Consumer-driven food safety has great potential but is still poorly understood with limited available data. Many behavioral, social, economic, and technical factors can impact whether market food safety can improve; hence understanding market dynamics is key to successful interventions. Hence, Feed the Future (FTF), funded by USAID has started a five-year project named EatSafe: Evidence & Action Towards Safe Food in different countries.
The project will be implemented in two phases in each country, in phase-1 foundation has been built for success and in phase-2 new knowledge and evidence have been gathered to inform future programming. EatSafe has been led by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), in partnership with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Pierce Mill Entertainment and Education (PME).
GAIN Bangladesh has taken the initiative to study the consumer and vendor behavior of one wet markets from each city corporation of Dhaka city. Here, ARCED Foundation and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) has been the Data Management Partner and Development partner respectively. In order to fill this current data vacuum and make the study successful, ARCED has brought a wealth of experience in large scale data collection using the Open Data Kit (ODK) based SurveyCTO platform, which is a high-quality platform that offers the features necessary for data security and quality.
Moreover, ARCED has also trained and equipped data collection surveyor teams who can carry out the survey activities in any situation such as lockdown for COVID for the rapid assessment of consumer and vendor perceptions, and assessing the resilience of markets through real-time food price tracking and consumer and vendor observations, via online training. Additionally, ARCED Foundation has been responsible for collecting data from Bnololata and Islambagh wet market by surveying 40 consumers and 40 vendors twice a month and also produce bi-weekly bulletin including codebook and syntax for analysis.