More than 2.3 lakh of fatalities and 3 million + infection globally (till March end), Corona has affected the entire world in all possible ways. All developed countries like USA, Canada and the UK and EU countries have been affected like never before and developing counties like India are trying to reduce the contamination as much as possible. Most of the countries are under lockdown and nobody knows that till when it will last.... everyone is wishing that we get out of this situation as soon as possible).
Every action comes with a reaction (sometimes with few positives), and from food safety /food technology angle, we are anticipating few positive post-effects out of this epidemic. Here are few:
Food Safety
Personal Hygiene: If you ask any food safety professional that what is one of the most important practices they enforce in their manufacturing facilities / restaurants? Most of them will shout " Its Personal Hygiene " of the people working there .It is just because the people who are working on shop floor in the facilities / restaurants and so on are comparatively less aware about the benefit of these practices and food safety team members need to train them again and again because practices get diluted over the period of time. Also new associates take little more time to understand the importance of personal hygiene but during this crisis, due to such huge awareness about personal hygiene like hand washing / sanitising and using PPEs ( mask, gloves and so on) , will create a huge difference and we expect people will understand the significance of these
Now it’s good that more than 1,000 videos and 10k+ articles/ posters are explaining the benefits of personal hygiene related practices. All of us would have seen a video where older lady and three years older child were telling that washing hands is not sufficient until you wash more than 20 seconds. This gives the confidence that our older and new generation is learning something new and beneficial during this crisis.
Cleaning and Sanitation:: Now coming to second post-effect will be the increase in awareness about cleaning and sanitation related practices .In news and social media we all can see that the streets , lifts , escalators , roads , malls , hospitals and so on are being continuously cleaned and sanitised to kill the live virus . It’s very good and soothing to see that there are many videos demonstrating the techniques of cleaning and sanitation which highlights the specific areas like lift buttons, hand rails and handles. We expect that this will enable non-technical people to assess the risk and cleaning accordingly.
Understanding of Basic Microbiology: Out of three hazards (physical, chemical and microbiological) , microbiological hazard is most common and during this crisis/ epidemic the most commonly used term is "virus" which is causing the illness . Equal number of visuals and posters are telling that how virus works , its life cycle, how it get killed and so on and in same way people are reading about other microbes (bacteria , mould, yeast). We are expecting that this will create more awareness about basic microbiology among common people.
Food Technology/ Processing
Focus on automation: In this crisis, one call out is very clear that the food which is being touched by hands, has more susceptibility of getting infected so most of the manufacturers will definitely do a transition from manual/ semi-automatic processes to an automatic process so that they can claim that their product is free from any manual handling so free from any possible contamination which may happen due to hand handling.
Recently top end companies like Fonterra Future Dairy (which produces dairy products under the brand “Dreamery”) have started highlighting same , which gives an added confidence to the consumer in such crisis situation .
Even it’s been observed that farms (supplying fresh vegetables and fruits), also have started marketing about their automation resulting less manual handling of the vegetables and fruits.
New processing technologies resulting in less impact on food’s nutritional part: The second- biggest callout in this crisis is “The more immune you are, the less chances you have to get infected with Covid-19.” This has created a fresh debate on food with higher nutritional value which boosts immunity as well with taste. Unfortunately, most of the food processing techniques impact adversely on the nutritional part of food thus making it worse with few nutritional benefits.
Focus on new technologies like High Pressure Processing (HPP) will be the new attraction of food processors so that they can convey the nutritional message to their consumer.
Immunity Booster Food Products: We all can clearly see that most of the products which improve the immunity in any ways, are focussing this part during marketing . So it’s expected that in coming time the foods which improve the immunity will be the key development for any food processor. Some of the examples are dairy, nutritional powders and other herbal sectors, which may launch back to back immunity booster products in their portfolio.
(The author is food safety leader. He can be reached at Anurag.ft@gmail.com)