One Food Programme: key achievements and impact
The One Food Programme, a collaboration between Cefas, the Animal and Plant Health Agency and South African partners, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, concluded in March 2025. Funded through Defra's UK Development funded Global Centre on Biodiversity for Climate, the programme brought together 21 partners globally to develop One Health approaches for climate resilient, safe and sustainable food systems.
The programme focused on three primary themes: generating food system evidence, creating a One Food Risk Tool, and enabling systemic change. A key outcome was the establishment of a Community platform that integrates One Health approaches into sustainable food operations, recognising the importance of hazard control for both safer food and environmental protection.
The programme emphasised how food production's resource requirements place it at the intersection of climate change, water stress, pollution and biodiversity challenges. By transforming food systems, the programme aims to address food insecurity whilst delivering affordable healthy diets. A significant achievement was developing the One Food Risk Tool, a whole-system assessment tool that evaluates various hazards' impacts on food systems by considering chemical, biological, physical and socio-economic factors across value chains.
The team also co-led a panel session at the World One Health Congress in South Africa in 2024, featuring significant international organisations including the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Health Organisation and World Bank. More recently, Cefas led a collaborative workshop with the FAO in Rome on multi-hazard monitoring in agrifood systems, revealing complementarity between the One Food approach and FAO's Multi-Hazard Dashboard.
This work continues to inform Cefas' science themes and approaches to sustainable food security.
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