Covid-19 pandemic in the lens of food safety and security

Abstract

The recently emerged coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which has been characterised as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), is impacting all parts of human society including agriculture, manufacturing, and tertiary sectors involving all service provision industries. This paper aims to give an overview of potential host reservoirs that could cause pandemic outbreak caused by zoonotic transmission. Amongst all, continues surveillance in slaughterhouse for possible pathogens transmission is needed to prevent next pandemic outbreak. This paper also summary the potential threats of pandemic to agriculture and aquaculture sector that control almost the total food supply chain and market. The history lesson from the past, emerging and reemerging infectious disease including the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002, Influenza A H1N1 (swine flu) in 2009, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012 and the recent COVID-19 should give us some clue to improve especially the governance to be more ready for next coming pandemic.

Agri‐food sector and entrepreneurship during the COVID‐19 crisis: A systematic literature review and research agenda

“…Seventeen studies were collected under the AGRI2 category (Alekseev, Ruschickaya, & Yurchenko, 2020; Barcaccia et al, 2020; Blay‐Palmer et al, 2020; Christiaensen et al, 2020; Deaton & Deaton, 2020; Dupouy & Gurinovic, 2020; Fanzo et al, 2020; Gregorioa & Ancog, 2020; Hossain, 2020; Kennedy, Jafari, Stamoulis, & Callens, 2020; Ma, Peng, Soon, et al, 2020; Mausch et al, 2020; Popovic et al, 2020; Rowan & Galanakis, 2020; Savary et al, 2020; Singh et al, 2020; Sperling et al, 2020).…”

“…The export ban caused a reduction in world GDP to 13% in the first half of 2020, which suggests that the global food supply is affected by the exchange rate (Ma et al, 2020). The World Bank has stated that COVID‐19 pandemic disrupts the domestic supply chain while the global supply chain remains unaffected (Ibidem).…”

“…The World Bank has stated that COVID‐19 pandemic disrupts the domestic supply chain while the global supply chain remains unaffected (Ibidem). Domestic food supply was significantly affected by labor shortages, disruption of distribution systems, loss of income (Savary et al, 2020; Singh et al, 2020) as well as the massive loss of agricultural products that were impossible to transfer due to restrictive measures imposed by governments (Ma et al, 2020). For example, the food demand shocks in Southeast Asia were huge due to disruptions in the food supply chain, equivalent to a 1.4% decrease in GDP (Gregorioa & Ancog, 2020).…”

The Safety of Slaughterhouse Workers during the Pandemic Crisis

“…The meat processing sector, as well as the entire food industry, needs to prepare for epidemics and pandemics with new technological solutions, including a greater degree of automation and robotics, to reduce human food contact and the human density in workplaces to minimize food waste and ensure food safety [ 71 ].…”

Respiratory viruses in foods and their potential transmission through the diet: A review of the literature

“…Notwithstanding, according to several international organizations, the risk of infection through consumption of contaminated foods is being considered to be very low ( Government of Canada, 2020 ; CDC, 2020b ; EC, 2020 ; FDA, 2020 ). However, SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had a great impact in the food industry, as well as in the food safety due to the high economic losses ( Ma et al, 2020 ; Mardones et al, 2020 ). For example, recently White et al (2021) have reported that seafood catches, imports and exports in the US seafood sector have declined by 40%, 37% and 43%, respectively, when compared to the previous year.…”