Industry Members Research Articles

102 Developing Industry-Relevant Academic Research Programs in Meat Science

Abstract A synergistic relationship exists between the meat industry and meat science academic programs, leading to frequent collaboration between the two groups. This not only provides applied experience for students, but also allows the meat industry to utilize resources unique to academia and align academic research efforts to address industry issues. The meat industry is driven by efficiency; generally requiring ideas to be further along in development before thoroughly considering the incorporation of new ideas or technologies. This can lead to valuable improvements being overlooked simply because their full potential has not been previously demonstrated. In contrast, the university setting encourages the development of new ideas from the ground up. Therefore, academic research has frequently been the source of innovative concepts that have later been adopted by industry as common practice. It is this link between conceptualization and commercialization of new ideas that makes relationships between academic and industry scientists so valuable. By maintaining these relationships, the meat industry can express areas for improvement and innovation, so that academic scientists can adapt their research programs to address industry-relevant concerns. This not only fills a void in the industry research and development process but also provides funding opportunities for academic scientists, both directly from industry and from trade organizations funding academic research on behalf of industry members. Changes in the diversity of market animals, increased consumer interest in production history, labor shortages, and increased concern for sustainable food production only describe a few of the challenges facing the meat industry. To rise above these challenges, collaboration between industry and academia will undoubtedly be necessary. This session will focus on current and future areas of interest to promote industry-focused research within meat science academic programs.

Safety and Health Programs in Alaska’s Seafood Processing Industry: Interviews with Safety and Health Managers

ABSTRACTBackground: The seafood processing industry is critical to Alaska’s economy and hazardous to workers; however, limited research has addressed workers’ safety and health. Safety and health program management is a decisive factor in preventing fatalities, injuries, and illnesses. We interviewed managers to gain their views on their safety and health programs.Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 upper-level managers who oversaw programs for Alaskan worksites. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Qualitative content analysis techniques, including inductive coding, were utilized to explore participants’ experiences and views regarding: management and workers’ roles; hazard control systems; safety and health training; regulatory and economic factors; and programs’ challenges and successes.Results: The 14 participants represented 13 companies that operated 32 onshore plants and 30 vessels with processing capabilities. Participants reported managing programs for an estimated 68% of the Alaskan seafood processing industry’s workforce. Based on participants’ responses, we identified five factors that could be modified to improve safety and health industry-wide: manager training and knowledge sharing; worker training; organizational aspects related to safety culture; application of ergonomic principles; and work hours. Participants reported that fully engaging workers in programs was beneficial.Conclusions: Industry members should more widely share their best practices for protecting workers’ safety and health. Occupational safety and health practitioners and researchers should support the development and evaluation of (a) training for non/limited-English-speaking-workers, (b) ergonomic interventions, and (c) fatigue risk management systems. Future research should engage worksite managers and workers to characterize their safety and health experiences and needs.

Interdisciplinarity in New Product Development in an Indian MedTech Perspective: Gap and the Solution

The medical device industry is a niche field globally and among the fastest growing industries in India. It requires specialised and interdisciplinary skills, as well as knowledge for innovation of new product development. New product development has four key phases: need finding, concept generation, engineering and validation. The first two phases require broad vertical and lateral thinking to come up with innovative plus appropriate solutions. Thus, multidisciplinary teams made up of experienced individuals with interdisciplinary knowledge enhance the phase outputs. The next two phases are iterative, usually requiring management of multiple subsystems, across technical disciplines and system integration. Without interdisciplinary product members and technical leaders, product development is not optimised. This leads to numerous iterations - loss of time, money. The industry struggles to find these interdisciplinary resources and building this capacity today takes a decade in India, with the entire burden falling on the industry. In well-developed medical device markets, higher education has introduced application-centric courses with cross-disciplinary curriculums. Such a structure allows students to gain valuable skills and understanding of the industry as a whole. Developed ecosystems have no shortage of experts available who serve as technical leaders. Developing countries like India have a very young indigenous medical device industry. In such nations, private companies struggle to find experienced individuals capable of interdisciplinary thinking and problem-solving. In this paper, we present India’s current Medtech perspective, and the industry member’s experiences through case studies and interviews. An outline for an academic model to meet the requirement of the industry has been presented.

ACS launches business pitch competition

American Chemical Society Industry Member Programs and the ACS Small Chemical Businesses Division are soliciting applications for the society’s inaugural Entrepreneur Pitch Training and Competition event, which will be held at the ACS Fall 2019 National Meeting in San Diego. Select entrepreneur teams will undergo free, intensive National Science Foundation I-Corp and business plan training and receive valuable feedback from chemical business and funding experts before presenting their business pitches live as part of an exciting competition. ACS will award the team who presents the best pitch with $5,000 to support its entrepreneurial venture. All participating teams will also receive free ACS national meeting registrations and kiosk space in the ACS Entrepreneur Pavilion. The pitch competition will take place on Tuesday, Aug. 27, from 9 a.m. to noon in the Industry Expo Theater. To be considered, submit applications by July 19 at bit.ly/2Lwk4cF.

Nordic Centre of Excellence Network in Fishmeal and Fish oil

The main objective of this work was to summarise current knowledge on fishmeal and fish oil as well as identify the research needs and create a roadmap for future industry-driven research. The main conclusion was that the quality of raw material, fishmeal and - oil are not yet well defined. The real focus by the industry has mainly been limited to nutrients, such as proteins and fats and other components that makeup fishmeal. There has been less focus on the health benefits of dietary contents of fishmeal and –oil and the relationship between processing methods and the nutritional and technical properties of fishmeal. In addition, to proactively strengthen the market position and competitiveness, it is crucial for the industry to achieve a common understanding of the needs of their customers in line with a clear profile of the benefits of their products. A communication strategy as well as a research strategy is needed. Finally, the identity of the industry needs to be clear and transparent to promote a story about the industry to provide a clear and positive image of the industry to be communicated to the society. This means, that a communication strategy as well as a research strategy must be established, as there is a lack of communication along the value chain from the industry to the consumers. There is still a lack of understanding by the consumers of why fishmeal is produced, the reasons must be communicated in such a way that it reaches the average consumer. The industry members are interested in moving forward to sustain the future growth of the industry. Fishmeal and fish oil production has been prosperous for a very long time, but to remain so, cooperation among all stakeholders is crucial for continued progress.

The Olympic Games, Agenda 2020 and action sports: the promise, politics and performance of organisational change

ABSTRACT This article examines the power and politics involved in the process of including three new action sports–surfing, skateboarding and sport climbing–into the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Drawing upon interviews with 20 key individuals involved in the process (e.g. action sport IF Presidents and staff; Presidents of action sport national federations; industry members; athletes), and formal and informal communications with IOC staff, we reveal the complex power relationships between the IOC and international action sport governing bodies, and within the International Federations of surfing, skateboarding and sport climbing. Furthermore, we contextualise the inclusion of these new action sports into the Tokyo 2020 programme within Agenda 2020 and significant IOC policy reform. Bringing together a critical sociological engagement of the Olympic Games with a typology of international organisational change, we consider whether Agenda 2020 is a policy signalling deep organisational learning and significant cultural change, or rather a superficial attempt at performing the changes necessary to maintain their dominance in the global sports economy. Despite promises and proclamations of organisational change, we conclude that the inclusion of action sports into the Tokyo 2020 Games is a salient example of the complex operations of hegemony in the highly competitive sports market, with the power of the IOC adapting and enrolling unlikely others in its operations.

What ACS can do for its industry members

Did you know that in recent years, the number of industry members in the American Chemical Society has been declining? In 2012, the number was around 58,000, and by the end of 2018, the number of industry members had dropped to about 45,000. What could be behind this decline? And what can ACS do about it? First, we must recognize that the career path for chemists in industry has changed dramatically over the past 30–40 years. What once were fairly stable paths through laboratory, manufacturing, and technical service roles have been significantly transformed. Industrial technologies, lower-cost labor markets, multidisciplinary integration, mergers and acquisitions, intense global competition, the need to rapidly improve and change how industrial innovation occurs, and—most of all—the pressure to improve profit margins have all contributed to this transformation. The skill sets needed to be successful include not only core chemistry knowledge but also information technology capabilities; the

Recommendations for depicting suicide in entertainment released

The first‐ever national recommendations for depicting suicide in entertainment content were released March 12 by the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention (Action Alliance), the nation's public‐private partnership for suicide prevention. The recommendations aim to help members of the entertainment industry — content creators, scriptwriters and producers — tell more balanced and authentic stories involving suicide and suicide prevention. Studies have found that the way the media covers suicide can influence behavior negatively, by contributing to increased suicidal behavior among viewers, or positively, by encouraging help‐seeking and recovery. To assist the entertainment industry in promoting accurate portrayals of suicide — a key goal of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention — the Action Alliance collaborated with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Entertainment Industries Council to develop the recommendations, which were informed by both representatives from the entertainment industry and the suicide prevention fields. The National Recommendations for Depicting Suicide's nine recommendations to help content creators craft stories about survival, hope and healing, include showing that help is available, connecting viewers to resources and using nonjudgmental language.

Gap analysis of the Canadian food fraud regulatory oversight and recommendations for improvement

The Canadian regulatory framework prohibits selling adulterated food or selling food in a false, misleading or deceptive manner. Although the number of prosecutions for food fraud cases in Canada has steadily decreased in the last decade, except for a spike in 2017, penalties are becoming more severe (i.e. 12-fold increase in fine amount between 2008 and 2018). The majority of cases are in violation with the Food and Drugs Act, Section 5(1), which prohibits “labelling, packaging, treating, processing, selling or advertising food in a manner that is false, misleading or deceptive or is likely to create an erroneous impression.” In the cases presented in this study, violators having been found guilty were fined between $25,000 and $1.5 million, but none were sentenced to imprisonment.To improve control over food fraud incidents, the Canadian government should clearly define food fraud and include a definition and description of the different types of fraudulent activities. To support this, the Government of Canada should raise awareness about food fraud among members of the food industry, while requiring expanded testing of raw ingredients and final products for authenticity. A critical step is for the Canadian government to conduct a country-wide food fraud vulnerability assessment to identify the most problematic types of food fraud and then create a country-wide food fraud prevention strategy. Once the prevention strategy is in place, then the most efficient countermeasures and control systems can be considered. The holistic and all-encompassing food fraud prevention focus would be on a coordinated and optimized reduction of the entire fraud opportunity. The creation of government-industry-academia partnerships would also play an essential role in preventing and combating food fraud. It is possible that few – if any – additional government allocation will be required to put the plan in place and begin to make significant improvements.

Analysing the traceability system in herbal product industry by game theory

The agricultural traceability system provides information transparency throughout the agricultural supply chain. This paper applies game theory to analyse the traceability system used by the herbal product industry in order to elucidate the strategic choices made by government authorities, farmers (e.g. producers), certification agencies, and consumers. This paper clarifies how relevant variables affect the traceability system employed in the herbal product industry. The analysis yields strong results and indicates a superior equilibrium; the observed strategic choices comprise active traceability system promotion by authorities, development of a comprehensive traceability system by farmers, maintenance of independence by certification agencies, and purchase of herbal products by consumers. The traceability system and existing herbal product safety programs must be refined because they are crucial to consumers, farmers, and people who support agricultural communities. These results contribute to the literature in the field, serving as a reference for members of the herbal product industry, government authorities, and academics.

The Impact of Qualified Health Claims on Advertising Evaluations: The Cases of POM Wonderful and Minute Maid

Recently, there has been increasing attention to and importance placed on qualified health claims both on industry and policy fronts. All parties have been advocating for broader qualified health claims to improve the information that consumers possess so that they can make more informed decisions. This research attempts to inform this discussion by examining consumer responses to qualified health claims and the scientific certainty that supports the health claim. The results of this study have important implications for consumers who are prospective buyers of these products as well as policymakers and industry members.

Meeting Report: Key Outcomes from a Collaborative Summit on Agricultural Water Standards for Fresh Produce.

On February 27 to 28, 2018, the Produce Safety Alliance convened a national water summit in Covington, KY to discuss the requirements of the United States Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act Standards for the Growing, Harvesting, Packing, and Holding of Produce for Human Consumption (Produce Safety Rule [PSR]). The goals of the meeting were to better understand the challenges growers face in implementing the requirements in Subpart E-Agricultural Water and work collaboratively to develop practical solutions to meet fruit and vegetable production needs while protecting public health. To meet these goals, the summit engaged a diverse group of stakeholders including growers, researchers, extension educators, produce industry members, and regulatory personnel. Key outcomes included defining implementation barriers due to diversity in water sources, distribution systems, commodity types, climates, farm size, and production activities. There was an articulated need for science-based solutions, such as the use of agricultural water system assessments and sharing of federal, state, and regional water quality data, to ensure qualitative and quantitative standards reduce microbial risks. These identified challenges and needs resulted in significant debate about whether reopening the PSR-Subpart E for modification or attempting to address concerns through guidance would provide the best mechanism for alleviating concerns. In addition, training, outreach, and technical assistance were identified as vital priorities once the concerns are formally addressed by FDA. The water summit highlighted the critical need for transparency of FDA's progress on reevaluating the Subpart E requirements to help guide growers' decisions regarding the use of agricultural water.

Consensus: guidelines: best practices for detection, assessment and management of suspected acute drug-induced liver injury during clinical trials in patients with nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.

SummaryBackgroundThe last decade has seen a rapid growth in the number of clinical trials enrolling patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). Due to the underlying chronic liver disease, patients with NASH often require different approaches to the assessment and management of suspected drug‐induced liver injury (DILI) compared to patients with healthy livers. However, currently no regulatory guidelines or position papers systematically address best practices pertaining to DILI in NASH clinical trials.AimsThis publication focuses on best practices concerning the detection, monitoring, diagnosis and management of suspected acute DILI during clinical trials in patients with NASH.MethodsThis is one of several papers developed by the IQ DILI Initiative, comprised of members from 15 pharmaceutical companies, in collaboration with DILI experts from academia and regulatory agencies. This paper is based on extensive literature review, and discussions between industry members with expertise in drug safety and DILI experts from outside industry to achieve consensus on common questions related to this topic.ResultsRecommended best practices are outlined pertaining to hepatic inclusion and exclusion criteria, monitoring of liver tests, DILI detection, approach to a suspected DILI signal, causality assessment and hepatic discontinuation rules.ConclusionsThis paper provides a framework for the approach to assessment and management of suspected acute DILI during clinical trials in patients with NASH.

The importance of drug safety and tolerability in the development of new immunosuppressive therapy for transplant recipients: The Transplant Therapeutics Consortium's position statement.

The Transplant Therapeutics Consortium (TTC) is a public-private partnership between the US Food and Drug Administration and the transplantation community including the transplantation societies and members of the biopharmaceutical industry. The TTC was formed to accelerate the process of developing new medical products for transplant patients. The initial goals of this collaboration are the following: (a) To define which aspects of the kidney transplant drug-development process have clear needs for improvement from an industry and regulatory perspective; (b) to define which of the unmet needs in the process could be positively impacted through the development of specific drug-development tools based on available data; and (c) to determine the most appropriate pathway to achieve regulatory acceptance of the proposed process-accelerating tools. The TTC has identified 2 major areas of emphasis: new biomarkers or endpoints for determining the efficacy of new therapies and new tools to assess the safety or tolerability of new therapies. This article presents the rationale and planned approach to develop new tools to assess safety and tolerability of therapies for transplant patients. We also discuss how similar efforts might support the continued development of patient-reported outcome measures in the future.

Perspectives on trace chemical safety and chemophobia: risk communication and risk management.

Safety issues regarding consumer products contaminated with trace amounts of chemicals are of great concern to consumers, with the degree of concern occasionally escalating to the psychological syndrome, chemophobia, i.e., the fear of chemicals. Hazardous substances frequently implicated in safety concerns include heavy metals (arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and lead), volatile organic compounds (VOC) such as benzene and o-toluidine, pesticides, carcinogens, radioactive substances, and endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC) such as bisphenol A and phthalates. To improve communication of risk to society, members of academia, government, consumer organizations, and industry participated in this workshop to discuss and exchange perspectives on trace chemical safety. From the perspective of academia, integrated risk assessments need to be implemented to encompass various exposure sources and routes. The identification and investigation of new exposure-related biomarkers are also recommended to verify direct causal relationships between specific chemical exposure and effects on human health. As for regulation, governments need to establish and maintain acceptable limits for trace chemicals in products. In addition, harmonized efforts need to be undertaken among government agencies to share regulatory limits and effectively control trace chemicals in consumer products. Manufacturers need to faithfully abide by Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) guidelines, monitor sources of contamination, and minimize these for consumer safety. To effectively resolve safety issues arising from trace chemicals exposure, collaborative efforts are needed involving academia, government, consumer organizations, and industry. Further, scientific evidence-based risk assessment is a critical approach to effectively manage trace chemical safety issues.

Assessing the role of triple helix system intermediaries in nurturing an industrial biotechnology innovation network

The rate of transition to a circular economy would largely be influenced by how successfully sustainable niche innovation can be developed and adopted. This paper measures and evaluates the effectiveness of employing a triple helix-based system intermediary as a policy tool for nurturing a niche innovation network in line with circular economy transition. This was achieved through a complete social network analysis of a national industrial biotechnology innovation network, in which the organization functioning as network manager was innovatively structured as a triple helix-based system intermediary. Through unique access to the entire national industrial biotechnology niche network, a large set of primary data was collected on 13 types of relational ties related to innovation between all 64 public sector, industry and academic niche network member organizations. The impact of the triple helix-based system intermediary on the level of cohesion, presence of cohesive subgroups and centralisation of the niche network was empirically measured. As such, the effectiveness of the intermediary in undertaking key nurturing activities of building the network, facilitating shared learning and raising expectations were evaluated. This allowed for the most comprehensive empirical study to date on a niche innovation network and the role of system intermediaries in circular economy transition. The results of the analysis demonstrate the profound nurturing effect that the introduction of a triple helix-based system intermediary has had on the network. In particular, the results appear to confirm the effectiveness of the intermediary with regards to increasing knowledge and resource flows amongst triple helix institutions as well as between regime and niche actors.

Adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) in Agriculture and Smart Farming towards Urban Greening: A Review

It is essential to increase the productivity of agricultural and farming processes to improve yields and cost-effectiveness with new technology such as the Internet of Things (IoT). In particular, IoT can make agricultural and farming industry processes more efficient by reducing human intervention through automation. In this study, the aim to analyze recently developed IoT applications in the agriculture and farming industries to provide an overview of sensor data collections, technologies, and sub-verticals such as water management and crop management. In this review, data is extracted from 60 peer-reviewed scientific publications (2016-2018) with a focus on IoT sub-verticals and sensor data collection for measurements to make accurate decisions. Our results from the reported studies show water management is the highest sub-vertical (28.08%) followed by crop management (14.60%) then smart farming (10.11%). From the data collection, livestock management and irrigation management resulted in the same percentage (5.61%). In regard to sensor data collection, the highest result was for the measurement of environmental temperature (24.87%) and environmental humidity (19.79%). There are also some other sensor data regarding soil moisture (15.73%) and soil pH (7.61%). Research indicates that of the technologies used in IoT application development, Wi-Fi is the most frequently used (30.27%) followed by mobile technology (21.10%). As per our review of the research, we can conclude that the agricultural sector (76.1%) is researched considerably more than compared to the farming sector (23.8%). This study should be used as a reference for members of the agricultural industry to improve and develop the use of IoT to enhance agricultural production efficiencies. This study also provides recommendations for future research to include IoT systems' scalability, heterogeneity aspects, IoT system architecture, data analysis methods, size or scale of the observed land or agricultural domain, IoT security and threat solutions/protocols, operational technology, data storage, cloud platform, and power supplies.

The 3rd Antibody Validation meeting: Bath UK 20-21 st September 2018.

The International Antibody Validation meetings offer a welcome British forum for discussing this important topic, which is existentially crucial for the biological sciences community. Now in its 6th year, the biennial meeting is organized by Andrew Chalmers (University of Bath; CiteAb), this year with Carly Dix (Astra Zeneca). The organizers gathered some 100 members of industry and academia, producers and users, for a day and a half to describe their efforts to ensure that their antibodies have the desired specificity and selectively for well-defined molecular targets. The meeting is largely available as WebCasts ( http://www.antibodyvalidation.co.uk/past-events/2018).

Evaluation of Sustainable Factors in the Chinese Construction Process

Abstract: The building sector plays a key role in the global economic, social and environment development. The energy consumed during construction and operation processes accounts for around 40% of the global energy use. China is the largest developing country and its construction market is one of the largest markets in the world. Although the construction phase occupies only a short period over the entire life cycle of a building, it is still an essential aspect of the process. However, in China, the concept of green construction remains scarcely known amongst construction industry members. Green construction continues to experience a disparity in the Chinese construction industry. Therefore, the aim of this study is to appraise the concept of green construction in the Chinese construction industry and to consider how it could be applied in most Chinese construction projects.

Examining Canadian Equine Industry Participants' Perceptions of Horses and Their Welfare.

Simple SummaryThe Canadian equine industry is a diverse and fragmented industry containing a multitude of individuals whose different backgrounds and involvements shape their perceptions of the horses they use and work with. An online survey distributed to adult members of the Canadian equine industry (n = 901) was used to provide insight into participants’ perceptions of horse sentience and the welfare status of animals in the industry. Participants strongly believed that horses can experience emotions such as pain and fear, but these opinions were rarely reflected in their answers regarding welfare issues. Participants involved in disciplines having a history of using horses for work were more inclined to consider horses livestock, and this belief impacted their responses to welfare concerns, for example being less concerned about horses at auctions. While there was strong agreement regarding the welfare threats to horses in the industry, participants were more divided regarding the optimal ways to address these issues and which horses were most affected by them. Understanding these perceptions may be useful in the future to help direct educational programs and industry-wide initiatives, particularly in the area of equine welfare, in an effort to better the lives of horses through targeted knowledge transfer.The diversity of the Canadian equine industry makes determining baseline attitudes and beliefs a challenge. Adult members of the Canadian equine industry (n = 901) participated in an online survey to report demographic information and views on the role of horses and their ability to experience affective states. Questions regarding the welfare state of all horses in the industry, potential ways to address welfare issues, and eight short scenarios were presented. Qualitative analysis, descriptive statistics, and a Chi-squared test for independence examined survey results and potential relationships. Participants strongly believed horses were capable of feeling positive and negative emotions, particularly pain and fear, but rarely were these beliefs reflected in their answers regarding aspects of equine welfare, which may be due to the large bias in these beliefs. Lack of knowledge and financial difficulties were noted as the biggest threats to equine welfare. Overall, there was widespread agreement regarding the presence of welfare issues within the equine industry, but opinions were more divided regarding how to best address them and which horses were most at risk. Understanding these perceptions may be useful to direct educational programs and industry-wide initiatives to address equine welfare through human behaviour change.