The (un)Missing Ingredient: Unlocking new solutions.

The (un)Missing Ingredient: Unlocking new solutions.

Welcome back to The Missing Ingredient series!

The Missing Ingredient series revisits conservation programs I’m familiar with and examines how incorporating a sustainable food systems perspective could improve or enhance them. 

So far, we’ve examined fish as food, the world wide food web, and how beef impacts wildfires in the previous posts.

Today, we’re wrapping up the series by looking at a conservation project that had to explore the larger food system, which led to an entirely new audience and solution (a.k.a, a case study).

Supply, demand, and now…disease.

Wildlife trafficking projects have a long history of researching and tackling the supply and demand chains for exotic and illegal animal products. And believe me, it’s complicated!

The supply side grapples with illegal poaching pressures, sometimes heavily armed offenders, and secret financial investors.

Meanwhile, the demand side works to reduce the desirability of heavily desired items people want to wear, show off, or eat.

In between supply and demand is a murky transportation system that discreetly carries illegal goods across international boundaries.

Wildlife trafficking has traditionally been viewed as a conservation issue led by organizations concerned with the extinction of vulnerable, unique species. But in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic entered the chat and brought new and heightened concerns about zoonotic disease risks, turning a conservation issue into a health one.

Organizations focused on wildlife trafficking programs were now responsible for identifying when and where humans faced the greatest risk of contracting zoonotic diseases through contact with or consumption of wild animals to prevent another pandemic.

For an organization like TRAFFIC, which specializes in addressing the supply-to-demand chain of wildlife trafficking, this new mandate required the organization to explore a new thread of considerations beyond how wild animal products change hands.

Harvesting unique insights.

As you might imagine, this new mandate made a challenging issue even more layered and complex. It also raised a new set of food systems-related research questions the team had not previously asked, such as:

• What is the overlap between wild animals that are most likely to present disease risk and those eaten most often?

• How does the ‘form of product traded’ (raw vs. live vs. cooked) impact the risk of zoonotic disease?

• How do the handling and hygiene rules of a food producer (i.e., butcher, cook, etc.) increase or decrease the likelihood of transmitting disease?

• Where in the wild animal trade chain are live animals processed into food products? Which trade chain actors are involved?

• Are consumers of wild meat dishes concerned about zoonotic disease risks from what they eat? If so, is that a more compelling reason to choose carefully than conservation causes?

• Who do consumers trust and rely on for information about what is safe and healthy to eat?

New ingredients produce a different dish.

Answers to these food-related research questions produced more than interesting insights for the team; they unlocked new behavior change strategies that would result in highly efficient, impactful, and quick wins.

Based on the revised mapping of supply chain actors, the TRAFFIC team identified additional sectors involved in the animal trade chain (e.g., Processing, Serving) and many more stakeholders beyond the usual suspects of poachers, traffickers, sellers, and consumers.

New target audience: This helped determine that key “middle” actors of street market sellers and restaurants (as opposed to end users and hunters) have a high degree of impact and influence on whether wild animal meat is sold and, therefore, consumed.

New motivators: New research highlighted the lack of knowledge among sellers about zoonotic disease risk associated with selling and serving wild meat (regardless of whether it was being sold legally or not). This insight allowed TRAFFIC to work closely with sellers to improve their food handling techniques and prioritize ‘safer,’ non-wild alternatives like domestically raised chicken.

After all, no restaurant owner or cook wants to be associated with making their customers sick!

Source: TRAFFIC. (2022, July). Review: Options for Managing and Tracing Wild Animal Trade Chains to Reduce Zoonotic Disease Risk.

New messages: The team also determined that safety messages about consuming high-risk wild meat products were more effective at motivating change than ones focused exclusively on sustainability or legality. This data led to campaign messages prioritizing smart health and safety practices to avoid diseases for restaurants, market sellers, and consumers.

This is a growing trend across the globe: “65 percent of people globally say they want to change their lifestyle to be both healthier and more sustainable. Only a small minority (7%) are interested in becoming more sustainable without also wanting to improve their health.” – Globescan, 2026.

TRAFFIC’s research findings and engagement efforts are an excellent case study to demonstrate how exploring food systems that are adjacent or overlapping with a conservation project can open doors to new target audiences and more impactful behavior change strategies.

Finding the Missing Ingredient in Your Project

Everybody eats, including your target audience – even if your project does not revolve around food. Experiment with visualizing the food system surrounding your target audience: What does your audience eat (generally)? Where do they get their food? Where does that food come from?

Consider if answers to these questions overlap with your project (I’m willing to bet it will!) and how you can incorporate more of a food lens into your behavior change strategy.

→ That’s a (lettuce) wrap on the Missing Ingredient series! You can catch up with all four posts at any time using this link.

You may enjoy safely consuming these additional resources related to the project:

• World Health Organization: WHO. (2022, May 9). One Health. https://www.who.int/health-topics/one-health#tab=tab_1.

• TRAFFIC. (2022, July). Options for Managing and Tracing Wild Animal Trade Chains to Reduce Zoonotic Risk. https://www.traffic.org/publications/reports/review-options-for-managing-and-tracing-wild-animal-trade-chains-to-reduce-zoonotic-risk/.

• Thomas‐Walters, L., Cologna, V., De Lange, E., Ettinger, J., Selinske, M., & Jones, M. S. (2024). Reframing conservation audiences from individuals to social beings. Conservation Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.13064.