Interactions between risk assessors and risk managers during three major food incidents in Europe

Assessing food safety risks based on a geospatial analysis: toward a cross-regional food safety management

BACKGROUND

Food safety risks (FSRs) are increasingly characterized by geographical complexity along with rapid urbanization, changing dietary pattern, and the modernization of the food industry. These factors pose challenges for food risk control in developing economies, more so during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The accurate assessment of risk source and transfer path is a crucial step toward enhancing cross-regional food safety management. This study aims to examine the spatial distribution, transfer path and driving factors of FSRs in China, provided with a national food safety database collected from 8.63 million batches of food sampling inspections for 33 different types of foods across 30 provinces.

RESULTS

The findings reveal significant regional disparities in FSRs, which is the highest in the west with small-scale sampling inspection and the lowest in the east with intensive sampling inspection. Catering and processed foods with higher daily consumption suffer more profound FSR than agricultural products. As evidenced by the shrinking low-low agglomeration areas, the local FSRs have been effectively controlled. The high-high agglomeration areas playing positive impacts on risk control are expanding while distributed discretely.

CONCLUSION

The spatial transfer of FSRs is significantly driven by multiple drivers: regulatory capacity and intensity, information disclosure, food industry, regional economy, and food consumption. Assessing FSRs based on a geospatial analysis contributes to identifying risk sources, optimizing risk management, and constructing a sustainable food safety system. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.

Crisis Management Experience from Social Media: Public Response to the Safety Crisis of Imported Aquatic Products in China during the Pandemic

China's outbreak related to cold-chain aquatic product quality and safety in 2020 caused public panic and further led to a crisis in China's aquatic industry. This paper uses topic clustering and emotion analysis methods to text-mine the comments of netizens on Sina Weibo to study the main features of the public's views on the administration's crisis management measures and to provide experience for future imported food safety management. The findings show that for the imported food safety incident and the risk of virus infection, the public response had four types of characteristics: a higher proportion of negative emotion; a wider range of information demand; attention paid to the whole imported food industry chain; and a differentiated attitude towards control policies. Based on the online public response, countermeasures to further improve the management ability of imported food safety crises are proposed as follows: the government should pay active attention to the development trend of online public opinion; work more on exploring the content of public concern and emotion; strengthen the risk assessment of imported food and establish the classification and management measures of imported food safety events; construct the imported food safety traceability system; build a special recall mechanism for imported food safety; and improve the cooperation between government and media, enhancing the public's trust in policies.

Chromatographic-Based Platforms as New Avenues for Scientific Progress and Sustainability

Chromatography was born approximately one century ago and has undergone outstanding technological improvements in innovation, research, and development since then that has made it fundamental to advances in knowledge at different levels, with a relevant impact on the well-being and health of individuals. Chromatography boosted a comprehensive and deeper understanding of the complexity and diversity of human–environment interactions and systems, how these interactions affect our life, and the several societal challenges we are currently facing, namely those related to the sustainability of our planet and the future generations. From the life sciences, which allowed us to identify endogenous metabolites relevant to disease mechanisms, to the OMICS field, nanotechnology, clinical and forensic analysis, drug discovery, environment, and “foodprint”, among others, the wide range of applications of today’s chromatographic techniques is impressive. This is fueled by a great variability of powerful chromatographic instruments currently available, with very high sensitivity, resolution, and identification capacity, that provide a strong basis for an analytical platform able to support the challenging demands of the postgenomic and post COVID-19 eras. Within this context, this review aims to address the great utility of chromatography in helping to cope with several societal-based challenges, such as the characterization of disease and/or physiological status, and the response to current agri-food industry challenges of food safety and sustainability, or the monitoring of environmental contamination. These are increasingly important challenges considering the climate changes, the tons of food waste produced every day, and the exponential growth of the human population. In this context, the principles governing the separation mechanisms in chromatography as well the different types and chromatographic techniques will be described. In addition, the major achievements and the most important technological advances will be also highlighted. Finally, a set of studies was selected in order to evince the importance of different chromatographic analyses to understand processes or create fundamental information in the response to current societal challenges.