AsianScientist (Mar. 30, 2022) – Like falling dominos, no participant in a provide chain ever stands in isolation, and any bottleneck that emerges on the weakest hyperlink can topple a whole community. When COVID-19 struck and worldwide borders shuttered, nations that depend on meals imports like Singapore noticed the value of client items skyrocket because of the rising prices of delivery meals from abroad to native cabinets. In the meantime, different nations that closely export agricultural merchandise like Malaysia suffered important losses as produce piled up and rotted away, barricaded from reaching shoppers overseas.
Amid the strain to ship an ample meals provide, regulatory efforts to observe product authenticity took a backseat, making the meals system extra susceptible to fraud and adulteration. Throughout the pandemic, provide chain disruptions and the shift to on-line purchasing additional pushed meals sourcing and supply into the highlight. Nonetheless, these points have at all times been round probably as a result of a scarcity of client consciousness and stringent testing procedures.
In 2008, China’s notorious milk scandal made worldwide headlines when a number of dairy producers diluted their toddler formulation, including a chemical known as melamine to compensate for the product’s lowered protein contents. Practically 300,000 kids fell ailing after consuming the contaminated milk and over 50,000 had been hospitalized from kidney and urinary tract injury.
Because the world opens again up and extra shoppers shift to on-line purchasing, sustaining belief in world and native meals provide chains is paramount. Researchers and trade leaders in Asia are actually main the cost to develop foolproof improvements for guaranteeing meals integrity from farm to fork. Right here’s a take a look at some thrilling new applied sciences on the menu, involving synthetic intelligence (AI) and blockchain methods.
