Food Protection Trends - September/October 2020 - 350

interventions at reducing and eliminating food safety
hazards (23). Consequently, the multi-hurdle approach
provides a safer product and a shared contribution by all
value-chain actors. However, these types of approaches
require proper investments in food safety capacity within
a given agriculture value chain. Unfortunately, many lowand middle-income countries (LMIC) lack the necessary
investments, infrastructure, and governance to create strong
food safety systems at the community level and therefore
face large obstacles in terms of the control of foodborne
hazards within multiple food value chains.
In the country of Cambodia-a country with a population of nearly 15.3 million-child mortality rates are high,
with over 10,000 child deaths per year being attributed to
diarrheal diseases (27, 41). The majority of these disease
cases have not been traced back to a particular source;
however, the likelihood is high that contaminated foods
contribute heavily to the occurrence of diarrheal diseases in
a LMIC (17). The Cambodian diet consists predominantly
of uncooked vegetables (lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, Thai eggplants, etc.) that are commonly purchased
through informal market systems, which "escape effective
health and safety regulation, and are often untaxed and
unlicensed" (35, 38). In fact, a majority of vegetables in
Cambodia are sold through these markets (38). Informal
markets commonly source vegetables through the countries' vegetable value chain, which consists of several actors,
all of whom have a role to play in food safety. These actors
include farmers, collectors, distributors and vendors (38).
Farmers grow and harvest vegetables, which are then

FIGURES

transported by the collectors to the distributors that sell
vegetables in bulk. Collectors also procure vegetables from
the neighboring countries of Thailand and Vietnam. Finally,
vegetables are transported from the distributors to the
markets by the vendors or by other collectors (e.g., hotels or
restaurants) before they reach households or mass consumers (Fig. 1).
Contaminated vegetables have a high potential to cause
foodborne diseases and have been implicated in multiple
outbreaks worldwide (15, 30). Without proper handling
along the value chain, pathogens can easily be transferred
from the natural environment to vegetables, increasing the
consumer's likelihood of acquiring a foodborne illness.
In Cambodia, commonly recommended hygiene and
sanitation practices are frequently neglected. Furthermore,
the control of the vegetable value chain in Cambodia is
deficient in the areas of policy, regulations, guidelines, and
training and education (25). Consequently, stakeholders
within the vegetable value chain are unaware of the food
safety risks and may not use proper handling practices to
minimize cross-contamination. For these reasons, it was
thought important to conduct an explorative review of the
Cambodian vegetable value chain that defines the flow of
products within the value chain and provides insights on
potential contamination points. For the purpose of this
study, comparisons of practices between actors were not
analyzed with a statistical model, as such an analysis was
not appropriate for the type of data collected.
The two main objectives of this study were (1) to
describe the flow of vegetables and characterize the

Figure 1

FIGURE 1. A visual schematic of (A) Cambodian vegetable value chain as described by Sokhen et al. (2004) and
(B) Cambodian vegetable value chain explored as a part of the current study design.

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Food Protection Trends September/October

Food Protection Trends - September/October 2020

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