Occurrence Of Food Safety Incidents Research Articles

A Machine Learning-Based Anomaly Detection Method and Blockchain-Based Secure Protection Technology in Collaborative Food Supply Chain

The complexity of the collaborative food supply chain has resulted in the frequent occurrence of food safety incidents, which harm people's health and life. Therefore, the maintenance of food safety has become a key value. This study expects to solve the food safety problem and bring more benefits to people using intelligent systems. To meet the safety needs of the collaborative food supply chain, this study designed a food safety protection system architecture which collects the supply and sales data of various suppliers, as well as the data of equipment used in production. The architecture can carry out anomaly detections with machine learning to make a preliminary judgement on whether a problem has occurred in this batch of food during the transaction, and then implement in-depth anomaly detections with the supplier's equipment to determine the stage at which this problem occurred. The proposed system can help food operators achieve effective food monitoring, prediction, prevention, and improvement, thereby improving food safety.

An Evolutionary Game Analysis of Periodical Fluctuation in Food Safety Supervision

Periodical fluctuation is a common phenomenon in food safety supervision. The existing literature on China’s food safety supervision mainly analyzes periodical fluctuation by statistical methods. This paper provides a theoretical explanation by building an evolutionary game model between food enterprises and supervision institutions under bounded rationality. The “Sanlu milk powder” food safety incident is taken as a typical example to conduct numerical simulations of the food safety supervision game. Moreover, the determining factors in the periodical fluctuation in food safety supervision are analyzed in detail by numerical simulations, including the initial states and benefit–cost parameters. The results show that the periodical fluctuation and probability of supervision failure are influenced by the initial states. Supervision institutions should discard historical path dependence and adjust their supervision-intensity timing according to its actual effects. In addition, blindly increasing rewards or punishments cannot effectively restrain the fluctuation or reduce food safety incidents. To reduce the occurrence of food safety incidents and decrease periodical fluctuation, supervision institutions should reduce supervision costs by using information technology, establish strict food safety standards to eliminate “small-workshop” enterprises, be more aware of risks and appropriately overestimate the added benefits for food enterprises of becoming involved in illegal production.

A Research on the Crisis Spillover Effect of Food Safety Incidents on Competitive Firms: The Influence of Political Connections and Charitable Donations.

Taking the perspective of corporate social responsibility and institutional theory, this research establishes an innovative relationship between variables such as charitable donation, political connection and crisis spillover effect of firms through quantitative analysis using the event study method, regression analysis and the Heckman two-stage model. Taking 8 food safety incidents from 2011 to 2016 as research samples, this paper studies the impact of food safety incidents on the market value of both firms under crisis and their competitive firms, as well as the influence of political connection and charitable donation. Based on the current situation that the product crisis or reputation crisis of a firm will, inevitably, affect the market performance and value of its competitive firms in the same industry, this paper attempts to answer questions such as “what kind of firms are capable of minimizing this negative influence?” “will the political connection of competitive firms exert a positive or negative impact?” and “can actions taken before the crisis, such as charitable donation of competitive firms, help these firms in reducing the harm?” The conclusions are as follows: first, the occurrence of food safety incidents not only has a negative impact on the market value of the crisis firm, but also has a negative spillover effect on the competitive firm; second, charitable donations made by the competitive firm before the crisis demonstrates a positive competitive effect on the competitive firm, and the intensity of such charitable donations is positively correlated with this positive competitive effect; third, the political connection of the competitive firm has no significant impact on the crisis spillover effect. These findings provide enlightenment for the operation and management of firms in the food industry.

Discussion on the Current Situation and Countermeasures of Food Hygiene Management in My Country

<p><span lang="EN-US">In recent years, with the frequent occurrence of food safety incidents, all walks of life are paying more and more attention to food safety issues, which effectively promotes the development and optimization of the overall quality of food safety work in my country. On this issue, after a lot of exploration, the researchers pointed out that at this stage, my country’s food hygiene management still has certain shortcomings that need to be improved during the development process. Based on this, a large amount of management work is difficult to be implemented and practiced reasonably, which limits the improvement of the comprehensive level of my country’s food hygiene management work, and has an adverse impact on the development of my country’s food safety work. This article discusses the status quo of the development of food hygiene in my country, and proposes corresponding countermeasures, aiming to promote the optimization of the overall level of hygiene management.</span></p>

Consumers’ Food Safety Risk Perception of and Consumption Decision-making Behaviour

In recent years, the frequent occurrence of food safety incidents has brought great impact on consumers’ confidence in food safety, which has caused the food problem to become an important livelihood issue that needs to be improved and solved. The essence of food safety incidents is the market failure caused by the asymmetry of food safety information. Therefore, by taking the food safety as object of study, this paper firstly adopts the questionnaire research method to investigate the consumer’s food safety risk perception. Besides, according to the theories such as consumer behaviour decision-making and asymmetric information etc., the model of consumer decision-making behaviour based on a rational model was constructed, and the factors that affect consumer decision-making behaviour were studied. The results show that consumers are more concerned about the safety issues of food quality, but the satisfaction of the government’s supervision and food producer’ control on food quality is not high; consumers’ information recognition of food safety, risk perception, and consumer’s expectation all will directly or indirectly affect consumer decision-making behaviour. Finally, it proposes the suggestions and countermeasures for improving China’s food safety supervision as well as strengthening consumers’ food safety awareness, which is expected to help reduce consumer perception of food safety risks and restore their confidence in food safety.

汉信码在北京新发地水果质量追溯中的应用

近年来，随着食品安全事件的频繁发生，各种食品问题事件都给我们的食品行业敲响了警钟，构建食品安全追溯体系刻不容缓。将汉信码技术应用在食品领域，建立一个规范的食品安全追溯系统，追溯监察从生产到采购一直到食品销售终端整个供应链，对保障食品质量安全具有一定的实际意义。本文以北京新发地水果批发市场为研究对象，调查了汉信码在新发地的应用情况，针对其存在的问题，提出了解决办法和构建了新发地水果追溯体系。 In recent years, with the frequent occurrence of food safety incidents, all kinds of food issues have sounded the alarm to our food industry. It is urgent to build food safety traceability system. Using the application of the technology of Chinese character code to establish a standardized food safety traceability system in the food field and to monitor the whole supply chain from the production to purchasing then to market has practical significance to the safety of food quality. In this article, samples of Beijing Xinfadi fruits wholesale market are selected as the research subject to investigate the application of Chinese character code in Xinfadi. At the same time, the article constructs the Xinfadi fruits traceability system, aiming at solving the existing problems.

Food safety incidents in Beijing: occurrence patterns, causes and wider social implications

AbstractFood safety incidents have the potential to result in a range of adverse health effects, including diarrhoeal diseases and various forms of cancer. Furthermore, they also have a disruptive effect on the economy, trade and tourism. As Beijing strives to become a global centre of politics, economy and culture, serious food safety incidents continue to be frequently reported in the city. It is clear that a large number of food safety incidents, such as those that have occurred in China, and in some other parts of the world, cannot be fully tackled by means of conventional analysis, which focuses on biological and chemical factors, but which often ignores potential human factors (which may be intentional in nature). In this article, we dynamically examine the time intervals between successive distinct food safety incidents that were mainly caused by human factors. Our intention is to identify information that could be of use to governmental and other bodies in efforts to curb the occurrence of food safety incidents. We analyse data spanning a 10-year period from 2004 to 2013, during which time 295 food safety incidents occurred in Beijing. We find that the occurrence of food safety incidents was drastically different from Poisson processes, suggesting that their causes may have been systemic in nature. We further found that the sequence of time intervals had persistent long-range correlations, characterized by a Hurst parameter of H=0.65, suggesting that food safety incidents occurred in bursts. Finally, we propose scenarios that may be responsible for these long-range correlations. Our quantitative findings may not only hold in Beijing and elsewhere in China, but also in other parts of the world where human factors are an important cause of food safety incidents. In all those situations, our proposed scenarios for long-range correlations may be used as part of efforts to devise strategies to curb or prevent future food safety incidents.

The Effect of Quality Tracing System on Safety of Agricultural Product

Frequent occurrence of food safety incidents in recent years has made analyzing safety of agricultural product in view of contract theory become academic research focus. Based on incentive theory, in this paper we establish a static game under the condition of asymmetric information and analyze how the “company + farmer” contract is influenced by a complete quality tracing system composed of ex-ante inspection and ex-post traceability. Meanwhile, we find out that a complete quality tracing system can increase the safety level of agricultural product and that ex-ante inspection and ex-post traceability can replace each other in the process. Finally, we put forward policy suggestion for the policy-maker to solve the problem of food safety.

Consumer evaluations of food risk management in Russia

PurposeConsumer perceptions regarding what constitutes best food risk management (FRM) practice may vary as a consequence of cross‐cultural differences in consumer perceptions, cultural contexts, and historical differences in governance practices and occurrence of food safety incidents. The purpose of this paper is to compare the views of Russian consumers with those of consumers in European Union member states.Design/methodology/approachA survey previously conducted in five EU member states was replicated using a Russian consumer sample (n=460, SEM analysis). Psychological factors underpinning consumer evaluations of food risk management quality (FRMQ) were identified. A qualitative study (consumer focus group, n=9) allowed for in‐depth interpretation of the quantitative results.FindingsRussian consumers hold similar views to consumers in EU member states regarding their perceptions of what constitutes effective FRM practices. However, the perceived honesty of food chain actors was an important determinant of perceived FRMQ only for Russian consumers, who also perceived that they were primarily responsible for their own food‐related health protection. EU consumers attributed more responsibility to food chain actors and the authorities.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis compared Russian consumers with consumers in five different EU member states. The results cannot be extended to compare Russian consumers with the entire EU.Practical implicationsAn international risk communication policy is likely to be impractical, and should be developed at a national or regional level. Given that Russian consumers take personal responsibility for their own health protection, information needs to be provided to enable them to do so.Originality/valueTo the authors knowledge, this is the first comparative analysis of the determinants of perceptions of effective FRM held by Russian consumers with consumers from within the EU regulatory area.