Divulgació i sensibilització de pràctiques segures en la producció i comercialització d'aliments a la ciutat de Barcelona

Forma part de la col·lecció : "Bons profits"Publicat en el context de la Capitalitat Mundial de l’Alimentació de Barcelona durant el 2021Col·lecció extreta de fonts externe

El control oficial dels aliments a la ciutat de Barcelona

Barcelona Capital Mundial de l'Alimentació Sostenible 2021Bon profit

Digitalization and official food safety inspections at retail establishments

Digital technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to modernize official food safety control. Shift from paper- to digital-based systems enable recording and reporting data directly in digital format and further analyze and disclose inspection data. Further to this, digital technologies enable the automatization of processes through rule-based instructions, a fact that could positively influence the consistency of official control. Nevertheless, the extent of the use of digital technologies during official food safety control inspections by competent authorities (CAs) of European Union (EU) countries is not known. For this reason, the aim of this study was to assess the level of use of a digital environment during inspections at retail establishments. This was performed by administering a questionnaire to CAs from EU countries. A total of 88 national, regional or local CAs from 15 EU countries responded to the questionnaire. Of them, 62.5% (55/88) used a digital environment during inspections, the majority to standardize data collection and reporting. CAs autotomize processes through digital technologies related to the management of official control and generation of inspection results, but to a lesser extent to automatize decision-making during inspections. Of the CAs not using a digital environment (37.5%; 33/88), technological constraints and lack of economic resources were the two most prevalent reasons for not using such an environment. The use of digital technologies as decision support tools to standardize official controls and improve consistency and efficiency should be enhanced for the benefit of society.Peer reviewe

Digitalization and official food safety inspections at retail establishments

Authors gratefully acknowledge and thank funding from the Barcelona Public Health Agency (Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona, Spain) under Grant BEQU-2020-01.This multi-country survey study is the first research to our knowledge exploring the use of a digital environment during inspections in countries of the EU. This study underlines that many CAs in the EU countries already use a digital environment to support inspections at retail establishments. Moreover, the majority of CAs had similar reasons for and results derived from using this environment related to consistency of official control. In the same line, almost all CAs that use a digital environment carry out the same processes during inspections through such an environment. The results of this research provide interesting insights about the utility of digital technologies in official control, showing their possibilities and benefits. Moreover, these results might help policy-and decision-makers of CAs that do not use a digital environment during inspection to implement such an environment and improve the current official food control system.Based on our results, most of the CAs automate processes related to the management of official control. Those processes include the risk classification of food establishments, the selection of establishments to inspect according to their classification and the generation of notifications of follow-up inspections. Differences in applying the internal criteria of CAs for those processes would generate inconsistencies for example of how inspections for certain establishments are prioritized over the rest of establishments or frequencies of follow-up inspections. For instance, electronic work planning and scheduling tools are employed to support healthcare workers to actively remind upcoming events and prioritize visits (Labrique et al., 2013). By automatizing those processes, the responsibility to ensure that official control is performed consistently according to the internal guidelines relies on the criteria pre-established at the digital environment to automate the processes and not on officers' criteria. Likewise, this context may potentially help to prioritize risk-based planning of inspection visits and resource allocation. In view to automate processes according to a harmonized criterion, preliminary work has been developed in the EU to implement digital tools to support officers to automatically classify food when sampling according to the FoodEx2 classification (Nabais et al., 2022).Authors gratefully acknowledge and thank funding from the Barcelona Public Health Agency (Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona, Spain) under Grant BEQU-2020-01.The opinions expressed by the authors in this paper are solely their responsibility and do not necessarily represent the official views of their organizations. We would like to acknowledge all competent authorities that responded to the questionnaire as well as the support and/or contribution in the revision and/or administration of the questionnaire to Triinu Allika and Kadi Padur (Agriculture and Food Board, Estonia), Tamara Schaeffer, Katja Hellwig and Glen Mans (Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA), Netherlands), Mireia Colom (Provincial Deputation of Barcelona (DIBA), Spain), Noelia Elchichini, Elena Barco and Paloma Cervera (Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition (AESAN), Spain), Renate Rehm and Birgit Hogeback (Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection of the State of Lower Saxony, Germany), the Heads of Food Safety Agencies (HoA) group, the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKR) (Sweden), Aivars Bērziņš (Institute of Food Safety, Animal Health and Environment "BIOR", Latvia), Stine Thielke and Vibeke Højbjerg (Danish Veterinary and Food Administration (DVFA), Denmark), and Peter Wend (Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL), Germany). Additionally, we also would like to thank Carme Borrell (Barcelona Public Health Agency (ASPB), Spain) for her helpful comments on a previous draft of this manuscript. The authors thank Tomás-Andrés Van Eeckhout Carter for the English grammar review.Digital technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to modernize official food safety control. Shift from paper- to digital-based systems enable recording and reporting data directly in digital format and further analyze and disclose inspection data. Further to this, digital technologies enable the automatization of processes through rule-based instructions, a fact that could positively influence the consistency of official control. Nevertheless, the extent of the use of digital technologies during official food safety control inspections by competent authorities (CAs) of European Union (EU) countries is not known. For this reason, the aim of this study was to assess the level of use of a digital environment during inspections at retail establishments. This was performed by administering a questionnaire to CAs from EU countries. A total of 88 national, regional or local CAs from 15 EU countries responded to the questionnaire. Of them, 62.5% (55/88) used a digital environment during inspections, the majority to standardize data collection and reporting. CAs autotomize processes through digital technologies related to the management of official control and generation of inspection results, but to a lesser extent to automatize decision-making during inspections. Of the CAs not using a digital environment (37.5%; 33/88), technological constraints and lack of economic resources were the two most prevalent reasons for not using such an environment. The use of digital technologies as decision support tools to standardize official controls and improve consistency and efficiency should be enhanced for the benefit of society

Reinventing a public health organization Reinventando una organización de salud pública

Altres ajuts: Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona.The most advanced organizations are decentralized, collaborative and adaptive. This gives them the ability to manage complex situations. Laloux calls these organizations Teal. The aim of this manuscript is to describe the process of implementation of the Teal management model in the Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona (ASPB). There is a triple opportunity for innovation at the ASPB: political change towards a progressive government, the organisation is in a moment of massive renewal of its staff and there is a generational change that facilitates understanding the Laloux model, and the managers have a technical background with a long history in the organisation, which makes them aware of the organisation's capabilities. The process starts with the involvement of a small group of people (Llavor group) and it is then expanded (Planter group). As well as discussing the bases of the Laloux model, six working groups are formed (How to organise more effective meetings, Physical spaces, Spaces for reflection / trust, Time bank, Annual ASPB staff day, and Space for listening to the voice of ASPB workers) and informative workshops are organised for the whole organisation in which 67 people participated. In total, some 120 people from the organisation have participated in Planter group activities. The success of the first initiatives should help to ensure that the values and principles cultivated go beyond the frontiers of the projects to become a generalised style of management.Las organizaciones más avanzadas son descentralizadas, colaborativas y adaptativas. Esto les proporciona una capacidad de gestión de las situaciones complejas. A estas organizaciones, Laloux las llama Teal. El objetivo de este manuscrito es describir el proceso de implementación del modelo de gestión Teal en la Agència de Salut Pública de Barcelona (ASPB). Existe una triple oportunidad para innovar en la ASPB: el cambio político hacia un gobierno progresista, la organización está en un momento de renovación masiva de su personal con un cambio generacional que facilita la comprensión del modelo Laloux, y las personas directivas tienen un bagaje técnico con una larga trayectoria en la organización, lo que las hace conocedoras de las capacidades de esta. El proceso se pone en marcha empezando con la implicación de un grupo reducido de personas (Grupo Llavor) para después ser ampliado (Grupo Planter). Además de discutir las bases del modelo Laloux, se forman seis grupos de trabajo (Cómo organizar reuniones más eficaces, Espacios físicos, Espacios de reflexión/confianza, Banco del tiempo, Jornada anual del personal de la ASPB y Espacio para escuchar la voz de las personas trabajadoras de la ASPB) y se organizan talleres informativos dirigidos a toda la organización, en los que participan 67 personas. En total, unas 120 personas de la organización han participado en actividades del Grupo Planter. El éxito de las primeras iniciativas deberá servir para que los valores y principios cultivados vayan traspasando las fronteras de los proyectos para convertirse en un estilo generalizado de gestión