Food Safety Crisis Management-A Comparison between Germany and the Netherlands

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.

Microfluidic Paper-Based Analytical Devices for the Determination of Food Contaminants: Developments and Applications

Food safety is an issue that cannot be ignored at any time because of the great impact of food contaminants on people's daily life, social production, and the economy. Because of the extensive demand for high-quality food, it is necessary to develop rapid, reliable, and efficient devices for food contaminant detection. Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (μPADs) have been applied in a variety of detection fields owing to the advantages of low-cost, ease of handling, and portability. This review systematically discusses the latest progress of μPADs, including the fundamentals of fabrication as well as applications in the detection of chemical and biological hazards in foods, hoping to provide suitable screening strategies for contaminants in foods and accelerating the technology transformation of μPADs from the lab into the field.

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

Risk analysis consists of risk assessment (RA), risk management (RM), and risk communication (RC). In most countries, RA and RM of food safety are separated to achieve a high scientific integrity, and typically occur in sequential order. However, in case of a food safety incident, even though being separate processes, RA and RM are performed simultaneously due to great time pressure and expected high impacts. The aim of this study was to analyze and evaluate the observed interactions between RA and RM processes, during three major food incidents in Europe, and to provide suggestions for possible improvement. Based on the differences observed between the three cases, strengths and weaknesses of each system have been identified. The enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli (EHEC) crisis in 2011 in Germany, the horsemeat scandal in 2013 in Ireland, and the fipronil incident in 2017 in the Netherlands were used as case studies. Timelines of these incidents and crisis management procedures in place in each of the three countries provided the basis for further analysis. First, results showed that details of the communication processes between RA and RM bodies were frequently lacking in crisis management protocols. Second, RA, RM, and RC processes differed for each incident, due to differences in estimated risk for public health, but also due to differences in the organization within a country. Based on our results, we recommend that crisis management protocols should contain a section on communication between RA, RM, and on communication between member states in the EU.

Application of Microfluidic Chip Technology in Food Safety Sensing

Food safety analysis is an important procedure to control food contamination and supervision. It is urgently needed to construct effective methods for on-site, fast, accurate and popular food safety sensing. Among them, microfluidic chip technology exhibits distinguish advantages in detection, including less sample consumption, fast detection, simple operation, multi-functional integration, small size, multiplex detection and portability. In this review, we introduce the classification, material, processing and application of the microfluidic chip in food safety sensing, in order to provide a good guide for food safety monitoring.