Climate change is reshaping what, where, and how we eat. Extreme weather, shifting food availability, and rising food prices are pushing consumers to adjust their habits ; sometimes by choice (eating less meat, buying local or organic food, reducing waste), sometimes out of necessity. Meanwhile, new home-based practices are emerging or becoming more common: urban gardening, water reuse, home food preservation.

These changes may bring real benefits for sustainability. But they can also introduce new microbiological risks that remain poorly understood. In France, practices at home already account for roughly a quarter to a third of foodborne illness outbreaks. As climate-driven changes in behaviour accelerate, this question becomes more urgent and largely unanswered.

SafeFood4ClimDiet (ANR-24-CE21-0244, 2025–2029) sets out to close this gap.

Our two objectives

1. Identify the new or amplified food-related practices that consumers are adopting in response to climate change, whether deliberate or forced.
2. Assess and rank which of these emerging practices carry the greatest microbiological risk, to inform food safety recommendations up to the year 2050.
    

How the project is organised

The project runs over 5 work packages across 48 months:

• WP1 . Identify emerging trends in food consumption patterns linked to climate change (sociological study + text-mining)
• WP2 . Identify and characterise microbiological hazards associated with these new practices
• WP3 . Rank risks, combining practice, food and hazard into a single, comparable score
• WP4 . Communicate emerging risks to consumers through a dedicated digital tool
• WP5 . Dissemination to the scientific community and civil society, and overall project coordination

Looking ahead to 2050

Beyond describing today's practices, the project also builds a forward-looking projection: which practices, foods and hazards are likely to become more significant by 2050 as the climate continues to change? Two rankings will be produced — one based on current data, one prospective — to support both immediate and long-term food safety recommendations.

Our approach: three complementary methods