ONSSA: National Food Safety Digital Communications Strategy

The challenge

In 2017, Moroccan households reported meat spoiling, turning green, within days of the ritual slaughter during Eid Al Adha, driven by heat and improper handling. The National Office of Food Safety (ONSSA) had no communications strategy or crisis protocol in place to get ahead of it, complaints came in, and the response was reactive, case by case, after the damage was already done.

The approach

Rather than wait for complaints and respond as they came in again, the approach was to build the response before the crisis window opened. That meant working directly with ONSSA’s own specialists and veterinarians, not writing consumer messaging in isolation and having it reviewed after the fact, to map out the different concerns people would actually raise at different points: pre-Eid questions about selecting healthy livestock, and Eid-day questions about slaughtering practices, handling, and storage. Beyond just prepared answers, this meant shaping the full communications strategy together, the key messages, the content approach, and how it would reach people, so the response during the highest-pressure days was consistent and already planned instead of improvised.

The execution

1. 01Collaborated directly with ONSSA veterinarians and food-safety specialists to identify the range of scenarios likely to generate public concern across two windows, pre-Eid livestock selection and Eid-day slaughtering and storage
2. 02Shaped the full communications strategy together, key messages and content approach, and built a messaging library and response framework so answers were prepared and technically accurate before questions arrived rather than drafted under pressure
3. 03Developed the public-facing consumer messaging campaign itself, covering the full practical arc: selecting healthy livestock, proper slaughtering procedures, and optimal meat storage conditions
4. 04Responded to the public directly and in real time, comments, messages, actively participating in the conversation rather than only pushing out prepared content
5. 05Built a social listening dashboard using CrowdTangle to track sentiment and the shape of the online conversation as it moved through the Eid period