FOOD SAFETY IN PORTUGUESE COMPANIES IN COVID-19 PANDEMIC CONTEXT

The Food Safety Management System (FSMS) seeks to ensure the quality of food products in the whole food supply chain. In Portugal, like in all European Union countries, enterprises working in the food sector have to fulfil several regulations of food safety and quality to assure those food products won’t compromise consumers’ health. The COVID-19 pandemic brought additional challenges for companies and their food safety systems. Governments also have decreed new (additional) hygiene measures to be implemented by companies and applied to workers when handling products, such as: use of masks, more frequent hand sanitization, the distance between workers, more frequent cleaning of surfaces, etc. The aim of this study is to assess the most important aspects/challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Portuguese food production companies. The instrument used in this study was a survey voluntarily answered by 58 Portuguese companies acting in the food sector, by those responsible for the quality sector, or by those in management positions, using an online platform (Slido®). The data was collected in the period from May to August 2020, and the data analysis was made using an Excel database and spreadsheet functionalities. The results showed that the HACCP (part or included in ISO 22000) is the most implemented food safety system in Portuguese companies (in above 50% of the companies included in the study). Also, 20% have International Featured Standards (IFS) certification, and 16% declare to have implemented the ISO 22000 standard. Among the different attributes available, the attribute selected by Portuguese companies as most influential (most scored) to affect the integrity of the companies’ FSMS was the “temperature checking of workers”, and the least influential was the “staff awareness”. Furthermore, a great majority of the companies revealed that the FSMS include documents associated with response/incidents affecting food safety; that COVID-19 pandemic was identified as originating potential emergencies in the FSMS; and that the food safety teams were trained on how to react in case of a pandemic. Globally, companies’ respondents also admit that their FSMS allowed reacting to the pandemic of Covid-19, providing additional training to their staff to implement supplementary personal hygiene procedures (as: handwashing, physical distance, …), reinforce the use of personal protective equipment (such as masks), or adjust the sanitation/ cleaning practices associated with hygiene of the objects. According to the results, the market/retail was the sector of the food supply chain most affected due to pandemic Covid-19, and the Primary sector the least affected. In conclusion, the companies are, in general, committed to implement and reinforce the measures related to the FSMS, even under difficult circumstances like those resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. © 2022, Consulting and Training Center - KEY. All rights reserved

Experimental Determination and Computer Fitting of Desorption Isotherms of D. Joaquina Pears

Desorption isotherms at different operating temperatures provide valuable information for the design and control of drying processes. In the present work the desorption isotherms of pears are determined according to two equivalent forms of the GAB model at temperatures of 20, 25 and 30°C. These cover the range of summer average daily temperatures in Portugal, when the solar drying of pears is carried out. Two different computer fitting methodologies are used, namely, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Orthogonal Distance Regression (ODR), in order to evaluate the above mentioned forms of the GAB model.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B8JGD-4RTVWGX-2/1/6c903cd58bc08221bbe47d10c3f56d0

Modelling and simulation of pear drying

In the present work a diffusion based model was adopted to represent the drying behaviour of pears in a continuous convective drier, taking into consideration the variation of the properties of the pears along drying.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TY8-4N5TN44-8/1/bbea80bec199264414c970bd6e95ab4

Food Security and Sustainability: Discussing the Four Pillars to Encompass Other Dimensions

The unadjusted intake of food constitutes a real challenge for the several sustainability dimensions. In this perspective, the main objectives of this research are to characterise the current contexts of food security, its relationship with sustainability, and identify proposals and actions that may support the design of more adjusted policies in the future. In addition, it is intended to assess if the food security pillars properly address the sustainability goals and if the evolution of undernutrition is accompanied by sustainable frameworks. In this way, statistical information from the FAOSTAT database was considered for the several dimensions of food security over the period 2000–2020. These data were analysed through factor-cluster approaches and panel data methodologies, namely those related to quantile regressions. As main insights, we may refer that undernutrition is more impacted by the availability of food and nutrients and political stability than by the level of GDP—Gross Domestic Product (except for the extreme cases). This means that the level of development is not the primary explanation for the problems of nutrition. The main focus of the national and international policies must be to improve the agrifood supply chains and to support political stability, in order to mitigate undernutrition worldwide and ensure a global access to sustainable and healthy diets. In addition, it is suggested to rethink the four pillars of food security (availability, access, utilisation and stability), in order to encompass other dimensions, such as climate change.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio