Standards and agro-food exports from developing countries: rebalancing the debate

The proliferation and increased stringency of food safety and agricultural health standards is a source of concern among many developing countries. These standards are perceived as a barrier to the continued success of their exports of high-value agro-food products (including fish, horticultural, and other products), either because these countries lack the technical and administrative capacities needed for compliance or because these standards can be applied in a discriminatory or protectionist manner. The authors draw on available literature and work in progress to examine the underlying evidence related to the changing standards environment and its impact on existing and potential developing country exporters of high-value agricultural and food products. The evidence the authors present, while only partial, suggests that the picture for developing countries as a whole is not necessarily problematic and certainly less pessimistic than the mainstream"standards-as-barriers"perspective. Indeed, rising standards serve to accentuate underlying supply chain strengths and weaknesses and thus impact differently on the competitive position of individual countries and distinct market participants. Some countries and industries are even using high quality and safety standards to successfully (re-)position themselves in competitive global markets. This emphasizes the importance of considering the effects of food safety and agricultural health measures within the context of wider capacity constraints and underlying supply chain trends and drivers. The key question for developing countries is how to exploit their strengths and overcome their weaknesses such that they are gainers rather than losers in the emerging commercial and regulatory context.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Public Health Promotion,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Labor Policies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Livestock&Animal Husbandry,Food&Beverage Industry

Developing systems to control food adulteration

The objective of this study is to explore the current strategies available to monitor and detect the economically and criminally motivated adulteration of food, identifying their strengths and weaknesses and recommend new approaches and policies to strengthen future capabilities to counter adulteration in a globalized food environment. Many techniques are used to detect the presence of adulterants. However, this approach relies on the adulterant, or means of substitution, being "known" and an analytical method being available. Further techniques verify provenance claims made about a food product e.g. breed, variety etc. as well as the original geographic location of food production. These consider wholeness, or not, of a food item and so do not need to necessarily identify the actual adulterant just whether the food is complete. The conceptual framework developed in this research focuses on the process of predicting, reacting and detecting economically and criminally motivated food adulteratio

Guidelines for foodborne disease outbreak response

"The Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response (CIFOR) Guidelines for Foodborne Disease Outbreak Response were developed to aid government agencies responsible for preventing and managing foodborne disease. The Guidelines focuses on local and state agencies, including public health, environmental health, agriculture, and other agencies responsible for food safety, because they investigate most of the outbreaks of foodborne disease in the United States. However, the Guidelines also supports the federal public health and regulatory agencies critical to the U.S. food-safety infrastructure. The Guidelines describes the overall approach to outbreaks of foodborne diseases, including preparation, detection, investigation, control, and follow-up. The Guidelines also describes the roles of all key organizations involved in these outbreaks, provides recommendations for processes to improve communication and coordination among multiple agencies during multijurisdictional outbreaks, and identifies indicators that different organizations can use to gauge their performance in responding to foodborne disease outbreaks. Even though the Guidelines document provides comprehensive information for individuals and organizations involved in foodborne disease, it is not intended to replace existing procedure manuals. Agencies and individuals should use the Guidelines to compare existing procedures, fill gaps in and update site-specific procedures, create procedures where they do not exist, and train program staff. CIFOR intends the Guidelines to serve as a foundation for epidemiologists, laboratorians, environmental health specialists, and others involved in food-safety programs. Many local, state, and federal government agencies work to solve outbreaks of foodborne diseases, and CIFOR hopes this document will standardize foodborne disease investigation across all those agencies. Technical experts from different government and academic organizations across the country, representing a wide variety of disciplines, have compiled the information in the Guidelines. The Guidelines have undergone a comprehensive public review process. CIFOR considers these Guidelines a consensus document that captures best practices and identifies emerging new practices in outbreak response to foodborne diseases." - prefaceSuggested Citation: Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response (CIFOR). Guidelines for Foodborne Disease Outbreak Response. Atlanta: Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, 2009.Publication supported by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Cooperative Agreement Number 1U38HM000414.CIFORGuidelinesforFoodborneDiseaseOutbreakResponse.pdf1. Overview of CIFOR guidelines -- 2. Fundamental concepts of public health surveillance and foodborne disease -- 3. Planning and preparation -- 4. Foodborne disease surveillance and outbreak detection -- 5. Investigation of clusters and outbreaks 6. Control measures -- 7. Special considerations for multijurisdictional outbreaks -- 8. Performance indicators for foodborne disease programs -- 9. Legal preparedness for the surveillance and control of foodborne disease outbreaks -- Appendix 1: Glossary -- Appendix 2: Onset, duration, and symptoms of foodborne illness and associated organism or toxin (from the US Food and Drug -- Administration Foodborne Pathogenic Microorganisms and Natural Toxins Handbook) -- Appendix 3: List of key Websites and resources cited.SupersededPrevention and ControlInfectious DiseaseCooperative Agreement Number 1U38HM00041

Mobile Sensing, Simulation and Machine-learning Techniques: Improving Observations in Public Health

Entering an era where mobile phones equipped with numerous sensors have become an integral part of our lives and wearable devices such as activity trackers are very popular, studying and analyzing the data collected by these devices can give insights to the researchers and policy makers about the ongoing illnesses, outbreaks and public health in general. In this regard, new machine learning techniques can be utilized for population screening, informing centers of disease control and prevention of potential threats and outbreaks. Big data streams if not present, will limit investigating the feasibility of such new techniques in this domain. To overcome this shortcoming, simulation models even if grounded by small-size data can represent a simple platform of the more complicated systems and then be utilized as safe and still precise environments for generating synthetic ground truth big data. The objective of this thesis is to use an agent-based model (ABM) which depicts a city consisting of restaurants, consumers, and an inspector, to investigate the practicability of using smartphones data in the machine-learning component of Hidden Markov Model trained by synthetic ground-truth data generated by the ABM model to detect food-borne related outbreaks and inform the inspector about them. To this end, we also compared the results of such arrangement with traditional outbreak detection methods. We examine this method in different formations and scenarios. As another contribution, we analyzed smart phone data collected through a real world experiment where the participants were using an application Ethica Data on their phones named. This application as the first platform turning smartphones into micro research labs allows passive sensor monitoring and sending over context-dependent surveys. The collected data was later analyzed to get insights into the participants' food consumption patterns. Our results indicate that Hidden Markov Models supplied with smart phone data provide accurate systems for foodborne outbreak detection. The results also support the applicability of smart phone data to obtain information about foodborne diseases. The results also suggest that there are some limitations in using Hidden Markov Models to detect the exact source of outbreaks

Guidelines for foodborne disease outbreak response. 3rd ed.

cdc:23373Foodborne diseases and outbreaks remain a substantial cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in the United States and worldwide. It is estimated that over 9 million cases of foodborne illness occur in the United States each year. Of these, only a small fraction are associated with recognized outbreaks. It is widely believed, however, that outbreaks are substantially under-recognized and under-reported, and as our ability to detect and investigate clusters of illness improves, the proportion that are due to outbreaks or an identified source will inevitably increase. This is of great importance, as outbreaks provide an opportunity to identify food safety practices, environmental and other contributing factors, clarify attribution of illness to specific commodities, and improve mitigation and prevention of future events.The Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Investigations (CIFOR) is a multidisciplinary collaboration of national associations and federal agencies working together since 2006 to improve methods to detect, investigate, control and prevent foodborne disease outbreaks. Council members represent large agencies and groups with substantial expertise in epidemiology, environmental health, public health laboratory activities and food regulation at the local, state and federal levels. While a variety of discipline-specific materials are available, these Guidelines are intended to be a unique resource combining the perspectives of multiple disciplines and jurisdictional levels, emphasizing the importance of teamwork, coordination, and communication that are critical for rapid, efficient and successful outbreak response.This 3rd Edition of these Guidelines provides important updates and a more streamlined format compared to earlier versions. It also addresses rapid and continuing changes in many aspects of food safety, including laboratory technology, data sharing, improved disease detection methods, increasing centralization of food production, and changing eating habits.The first edition of the Guidelines was supported by Cooperative Agreement Number 1U38HM000414-01 from CDC. The second edition was supported by Cooperative Agreement Numbers 1U38HM000414-05 and 1U38OT000143-01 from CDC. The third edition was supported by Cooperative Agreement Numbers 5U38OT000143\u201005 and 1 NU38OT000297-01-00 from CDC. The findings and conclusions in this document are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of CDC.CIFOR-Guidelines-Complete-third-Ed.-FINAL.pdf1. The Evolving Challenge of Foodborne Outbreak Response -- 2. Legal Preparedness for the Surveillance and Control of Foodborne Illness Outbreaks -- 3. Planning and Preparation: Building Team -- 4. Foodborne Illness Surveillance and Outbreak Detection -- 5. Cluster and Outbreak Investigation -- 6. Control Measures and Prevention -- 7. Special Considerations for Multijurisdictional Outbreaks -- 8. Performance Metrics for Foodborne Illness Programs.2020Cooperative Agreement Numbers 5U38OT000143\u201005 and 1 NU38OT000297-01-001002

Stronger Partnerships for Safer Food: An Agenda for Strengthening State and Local Roles in the Nation's Food Safety System

Examines federal, state, and local agencies' responsibilities, strengths, and weaknesses in ensuring food safety. Recommends systemwide reforms to enhance state and local roles and improve surveillance, outbreak response, and regulation and inspection

Characterisation framework of key policy, regulatory and governance dynamics and impacts upon European food value chains: Fairer trading practices, food integrity, and sustainability collaborations. : VALUMICS project “Understanding Food Value Chains and Network Dynamics” funded by EU Horizon 2020 G.A. No 727243. Deliverable D3.3

The report provides a framework that categorises the different European Union (EU) policies, laws and governance actions identified as impacting upon food value chains in the defined areas of: fairer trading practices, food integrity (food safety and authenticity), and sustainability collaborations along food value chains. A four-stage framework is presented and illustrated with examples. The evidence shows that European Union policy activity impacting upon food value chain dynamics is increasing, both in terms of the impacts of policies upon the chains, and, in terms of addressing some of the more contentious outcomes of these dynamics. A number of policy priorities are at play in addressing the outcomes of food value chain dynamics. unevenness of the distribution of profit within food value chains, notably to farmers. Regulation of food safety and aspects of authenticity has been a key focus for two decades to ensure a functioning single market while ensuring consumer health and wellbeing. A food chain length perspective has been attempted, notably through regulations such as the General Food Law, and the rationalisation of the Official Controls on food and feed safety. However, there are still gaps in the effective monitoring and transparency of food safety and of food integrity along value chains, as exemplified by misleading claims and criminal fraud. This has led to renewed policy actions over food fraud, in particular. EU regulations, policies and related governance initiatives provide an important framework for national-level actions for EU member states and for EEA members. The more tightly EU-regulated areas, such as food safety, see fewer extra initiatives, but where there is a more general strategic policy and governance push, such as food waste reduction or food fraud, there is greater independent state-level activity. Likewise, there is much more variation in the application of both national and European (Competition) law to govern unfair trading practices impacting upon food value chains. This report presents the findings of a survey of members from the VALUMICS stakeholder platform, that were policy facing food value chain stakeholders across selected European countries, including both EU and EEA Member States. The survey was conducted to check the significance of the main policies identified in the mapping exercise at EU and national levels and so to incorporate the views of stakeholders in the research. The responses suggest the policy concerns identified in EU and national-level research resonate with food value chain stakeholders in participating nations. The report concludes by exploring in more detail how the themes of fairness and of transparency are being handled in the policy activities presented. Highlighted are the ways that both fairness and transparency can be extended within the existing frameworks of EU policy activity. The findings in this report provide an important context for further and detailed research analysis of the workings and dynamics of European food value chains under the VALUMICS project