Transdisciplinary co-creation to manage upcoming food safety challenges
food chain efficiency and efficacy must be improved immediately. According to King et al. (2017) 9 billion people will be on the planet by the year 2050, needing 70% more food, and requiring the food chain to become completely sustainable. food safety issues are going to arise as a result of global megatrends such as climate change, a rising and aging population, greater urbanization, and increased prosperity. These issues will impose new demands on food companies (King et al., 2017). Emerging economies, governmental capacity is restricted, as well as effective consumer demand, which prevents them from quickly achieving the same food standards and results as high-income countries (Unnevehr, 2017).
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Food safety is connected to food security via health and livelihoods, therefore it is vital to improve food safety in order to tackle the issue of food security (Unnevehr, 2017). Despite the fact that food security is of equal significance to both importing and exporting nations, a number of nations have inadequate food safety regulations and have not yet created effective monitoring or reporting methods to detect and track foodborne diseases(WHO, 2015). Enforcement of food safety regulations and robust monitoring networks are necessary at the national, regional, and international levels (WHO, 2015). According to the WHO ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’ (2022), increasing infrastructure through the complete value chain is essential for improving food safety. Proper and reliable curing and storage facilities, for instance, is essential to reducing linked to cancer mycotoxins (e.g. aflatoxins) in wheat, nuts, and related dry staple foods; capital-intensive cold chains that meet food quality standards are required for the export of aquatic food.
We cannot do this alone, digitalization in the food sector as well as emerging food quality practices in emerging countries are both complex issues. co-creation, the collaborative effort of an organization's different stakeholders to improve the value creation process, is critical in generating common objectives (Kim et al., 2020). Most crucially, the larger the variety among ecosystem participants, the stronger the support for innovation within the value of co-creation cycle (Eckhardt et al,. 2021). The difficulties and possibilities posed by technological progress and digitization, as well as the need of collaboration and cross-sectoral, transdisciplinary, multinational methods to ensure food safety on a global scale (WHO, 2020). Therefore, the necessity for innovative and effective partnerships for safe and sustainable food production is critical.
Research is rapidly going toward more transdisciplinary undertakings in order to address the most difficult challenges facing the world today (Lam et al., 2021). According to Augustin et al. (2021) achieving food security on a global scale, the food system must undergo significant reformation. Accelerating the development of sustainable solutions requires the agriculture and food industry to be encouraged to innovate systems (Augustin et al., 2021). Therefore, multi-stakeholder transdisciplinary partnerships enables co-creation and to speed up transformational change within food systems (Augustin et al., 2021).
Together with other organisations, like AGREA their knowledge on the Philippine food industry is a necessity to understand the culture and the gaps between the food industry in Netherlands and in the Philippines. Together with nuTIQ we combine our knowledge of food safety and digital solutions to come up with and co-create in new markets opportunities with the food industry. Profound helped us with their knowledge on emerging countries as well as sharing knowledge, with Profounds knowledge of food security and our knowledge of food safety, we can work symbiotically. Therefore, it is important to embrace your partners, and acknowledge them. It was a pleasure to see them at BioFach and we are looking forward our future project together. Our partnerships transcends disciplines and strengthen the global food chain as a whole, step by step.
If you want to read more about an holistic approach on food compliance management read ‘Food System Resilience within a Learning Organization’. Written and co-created between QAsssurance Netherlands, Food Protection and Defense Institute USA and Spaceforce USA.
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Author: George Anthony Miedema
Augustin, M. A., Cole, M. B., Ferguson, D., Hazell, N. J. G., & Morle, P. (2021). Towards a new venture science model for transforming food systems. Global Food Security, 28, 100481.
Lam, S., Thompson, M., Johnson, K., Fioret, C., & Hargreaves, S. K. (2021). Toward community food security through transdisciplinary action research. Action Research, 19(4), 656-673.
Kim, Dong W., Silvana Trimi, Soon G. Hong, and Seongbae Lim. "Effects of co-creation on organizational performance of small and medium manufacturers." Journal of Business Research 109 (2020): 574-584.
King, T., Cole, M., Farber, J. M., Eisenbrand, G., Zabaras, D., Fox, E. M., & Hill, J. P. (2017). Food safety for food security: Relationship between global megatrends and developments in food safety. Trends in Food Science & Technology, 68, 160-175.
WHO. (2015). WHO estimates of the global burden of foodborne diseases: foodborne disease 1440 burden epidemiology reference group 2007-2015.
WHO. (2020). The future of food safety: Transforming knowledge into action for people, economies and the environment
WHO. (2022). The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022.
Unnevehr, L. (2015). Food safety in developing countries: Moving beyond exports. Global food security, 4, 24-29.
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Topic world Food safety
Food safety is at the heart of the food and beverage industry. It ensures that the food we eat every day is not only nutritious, but also free of harmful contaminants. From field to plate, the industry monitors and regulates every step of the process with strict quality controls, advanced testing methods and continuous research.
Topic world Food safety
Food safety is at the heart of the food and beverage industry. It ensures that the food we eat every day is not only nutritious, but also free of harmful contaminants. From field to plate, the industry monitors and regulates every step of the process with strict quality controls, advanced testing methods and continuous research.
