Abstract
BackgroundThe Beijing Declaration on food safety and security was signed by over fifty countries with the aim of developing comprehensive programs for monitoring food safety and security on behalf of their citizens. Currently, comprehensive systems for food safety and security are absent in many countries, and the systems that are in place have been developed on different principles allowing poor opportunities for integration.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe have developed a user-friendly analytical tool based on network approaches for instant customized analysis of food alert patterns in the European dataset from the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed. Data taken from alert logs between January 2003 – August 2008 were processed using network analysis to i) capture complexity, ii) analyze trends, and iii) predict possible effects of interventions by identifying patterns of reporting activities between countries. The detector and transgressor relationships are readily identifiable between countries which are ranked using i) Google's PageRank algorithm and ii) the HITS algorithm of Kleinberg. The program identifies Iran, China and Turkey as the transgressors with the largest number of alerts. However, when characterized by impact, counting the transgressor index and the number of countries involved, China predominates as a transgressor country.Conclusions/SignificanceThis study reports the first development of a network analysis approach to inform countries on their transgressor and detector profiles as a user-friendly aid for the adoption of the Beijing Declaration. The ability to instantly access the country-specific components of the several thousand annual reports will enable each country to identify the major transgressors and detectors within its trading network. Moreover, the tool can be used to monitor trading countries for improved detector/transgressor ratios.
Highlights
Food safety and security is a worldwide priority issue
The approach taken for this project from the EU perspective could complement the work of the International Food Safety Authorities Network (INFOSAN) to assist researchers and provide information on food safety in relation to exporting countries for interested individuals
Our approach highlights the advantage of the network approach over simple frequency counts in that it takes into consideration the number of reports received by the transgressor country and the number of reporting countries related to alerts from the transgressor
Summary
In accordance with the Beijing Declaration, all signatory countries have agreed to develop comprehensive programs for monitoring food safety and security on behalf of their citizens. Market globalization, coupled with the information revolution, brings a number of challenges to monitoring food safety, such as comprehension and presentation of large and continuously growing (living) data sets. Whether they are exporting or importing, are motivated by their own local interest, and they form the intricate pattern of the global food safety. This pattern is organically emerging from the individual actions and can only be studied with posteriori analyses using food alert logs. Comprehensive systems for food safety and security are absent in many countries, and the systems that are in place have been developed on different principles allowing poor opportunities for integration
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