For the past few years, Veterinarians without Borders has been on track of global food fraud. Our research in this field regularly leads us to the slums of African megacities. As in all developing regions, the monitoring of food is rather insufficient there.

Food fraud can have consequences on health or financially. The latter are associated with additional costs for the consumer or economic losses for trade.

In terms of health, however, food fraud can lead to allergies or permanent physical damage, even to death of consumers!

Food fraud occurs when foodstuffs are placed on the market with the aim of achieving a financial or economic gain through intentional deception of consumers.

Thank you for everything you did to prevent cruelty to animals.
Thank you for your unbeatable efforts.
Thank you for the bright example you were to us all.
We will miss you.

Heli Dungler
Founder of "Four Paws"
1963-2020

The world population is growing. To feed the world and do it sustainably, an urgent and radical shift in our food systems is inevitable. The United Nations have proclaimed the Decade of Family Farming in order to give this paradigm shift the necessary scope. To foster biological diversity and sustainable food production instead of intensive farming...

The annual migration of wildebeest between the Serengeti and the Maasai Mara in East Africa attracts thousands of tourists from all over the world. For the Maasai, this is an unfavourable time. It implies danger for their livestock, because wildebeest are vectors of the dreaded malignant catarrhal fever, a fatal viral disease of cattle and sheep. An international team of scientists has tested the...

The African continent is home to an extraordinary array of indigenous cattle. Their different sizes, shapes and colours reflect their diverse habitats - from the harsh fringes of the Sahara Desert in North Africa, to the drier areas of the Horn of Africa, to the wet tropical lowlands found along the Congo River, and on to the vast savannahs of Southern Africa. "The story of cattle in Africa - why...

This alarming result was published by the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) in July. Thus, the number of malnourished people has increased for the third year in a row. The report can be found here.

The participants of our current project "Mobile school for Sandawe agro-pastoralists" are currently visiting an agricultural exhibition in Dodoma (Tanzania). Project Manager John Laffa is very satisfied with his students: "They are very motivated and open to new things. Whether animal farming, cultivation of grains or processing of agricultural products, they want to expand their...

For the inhabitants of the East African steppe, pastoralism has always been the main source of income. However, non-traditional pastoral activities are increasingly contributing to the pastoral livelihoods, namely honey, tourism and fishing. The scientists D. M. Nyariki and D. A. Amwata have integrated all these aspects in their current study and investigated the value of pastoralism for Kenya's...