…get out of the kitchen

One of the implications of all this energy we waste to swap coffee and wheat is that we're giving climate change a helping hand. The contribution made by today's food production systems to climate change globally will have tremendous impacts on the food it produces in the future. So this week, in a document much less concise that Peter Baker's BBC article, the FAO released 'Climate change - Implications for Food Safety.'

Anyone who enjoys regular access to CAB Abstracts and its sister database, Global Health will be aware that there is nothing that foodborne diseases like better than the climatic conditions heading our way thanks to climate change. Also, given that the viral and bacterial pathogens that cause us so much concern in the food chain can evolve tolerances at rates far superior to ourselves, they have a distinct advantage over us in the face of climate change. It's only natural to expect the fight against foodborne diseases to become a regular feature of the databases of the future.

And on the subject of the future, lying somewhere somewhere between the replication time of Salmonella and the extinction of the polar bear (but mercifully closer to the former than the latter), we at CABI are eagerly anticipating the arrival of a new database subset. Environmental Impact will host the world's information on climate change; including the potentially devastating effects on the food chain.