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It won't be technology that will solve everything in the future, but it will help detect and solve outbreaks much faster. It will
also help us identify the source of outbreaks much faster and much better than we do currently. Finding the source of an outbreak will help us understand what went wrong, and each time we have that information, we can correct this and learn from
these errors and from problems that we're not aware of, which will help us slowly build a much safer food safety environment.
Some of these new technologies with whole genome sequencing will certainly help us improve our system, the way we produce
food, but we still need good food microbiologists. We still need people able to culture bacteria, to understand the biology of
bacteria and viruses in food and in their environment along with the technologies.
A certain proportion of food safety regulators, food producers, and food researchers are learning from these events and
applying it. Unfortunately, there are also too many 'cowboys' producing and distributing food and managing food hygiene safety
that should not be allowed to do so as it requires a certain level of understanding of the problems taking food safety and production
seriously. If you cut corners when producing food, you might end up getting someone sick or worse, someone's baby. We can't
continue to have that lack of seriousness and professionalism in the way we produce food.
We now have about 600 INFOSAN members in 190 countries, so we're getting a good coverage of the world's food safety
authorities. We're conducting a series of studies of the network to understand precisely what the nature is of this network,
who is in it, how they operate, etc., and hopefully these studies will help us better target engagements and initiatives, national
workshops, and communication tools to help stimulate that active engagement. But it's like any other type of network where you
communicate and share information more easily with people you know and trust. We're trying to create that sense of community
in this network to allow people to be more confidant in sharing information and participating in the communication of food safety
events.
Leon: How can we best share that knowledge?
Peter: It's a mix of traditional tools we've been using for decades with the training courses. IAFP and other conferences
are golden opportunities to create networking. We still need to find ways of engaging in the same environment with a different
group of stakeholders. The food industry and food producers are sitting on an enormous gold mine of information to order data
that they are generating - far more data points compared to what the national authorities, inspection services, and the like are
able to generate. So that's where the bulk of testing and data and information about food is sitting - not with border control, in
inspection labs, institutes, and research universities - it's in industry. Unfortunately, the gold mine is not being tapped. We're
just throwing away all this data after it's being used for the purpose for which they are being generated, and we forget we can
combine this data generated with data from others and have a much better understanding of our food environments. In 2020, we
are still in the dark when we look at our food supply in the environments. We have small windows of light here and there where
we have a seemingly okay understanding of what's in our food and how our food is evolving, but the vast majority of information
is not visible. We still know far too little about our food environments, what's in our food supply, what's in our ingredients, the
changes across regions, across seasons. The information is there, it's generated, but it's not used the way it should. That's one
of the biggest and roughest challenges. How do we put all this information and data together, and how do we extract useful bits
and pieces out of it?
Leon: What are the challenges and opportunities in the near future regarding food safety?
Peter: We have a growing world population that will, unfortunately with global warming, require us to produce more food in
new areas. So, it clearly has to do with the surface we have to produce food and the technologies we have because technologies
are moving rather slowly, and we have to do a lot in terms of the waste produced. We're still wasting an incredible amount of
food, which is morally and financially unacceptable. I see a lot of efforts being done there and also a big drive from consumers
into refusing this vast amount of waste.
Another big change is 'the age of the robots.' They are going to be the ones producing food very quickly. Having humans
in factories and humans in fields producing food is going to quickly evolve and be replaced by intelligent machines. It's incredibly important that as we as food safety specialists and food scientists are part of this revolution. We should not let IT 'freaks'
and 'experts' develop and design the concepts that drive these machines without us. We should be at the table and make sure
food safety hygiene concepts are built into them. I would not like to see us be the ones to train robots in ten years' time in food
hygiene and food safety. That would be a disaster.
Leon: Could machines help us produce foods for the future that don't rely on animals?
Peter: Logic tells us that it's clear we have to do with less meat and animals in the future. But we're humans, and we like
meat. Changing our habits in terms of supply will take time. Price will be a huge driving force, and people will have to find something to replace meat. So, a combination of those will probably help push our food supply to changing in the coming decades.
Clearly, meat will not be in the same amount of meat, so we have to reduce our family consumption. But we also need to be
much more careful with what and how we interact with wildlife and how we use wildlife for food and other purposes. This year,
COVID-19 reminds us of the cost of neglecting that aspect and not learning the lesson from SARS and MERS and from the
different bird flu outbreaks. I think we'll see more investments in traditional markets and in biosecurity on farms to ensure better
surveillance of our food production and with wildlife to avoid these types of events in the future. We won't be able to afford
another COVID-19 in the coming years for sure.

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Food Protection Trends - January/February 2021

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