Safety of foods, food supply chain and environment within the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a new era in the world while we still figure out the consequences in different aspects of our daily life. The food supply chain and the food industry do not comprise an exception.

Scope and approach: This review summarizes the possible transmission ways of COVID-19 through the foods, food supply chain, surfaces, and environment before exploring the development of corresponding detection tools of SARS-CoV-2. For the time being, the possibility of transmission through the food sector is considered negligible, and tracing of SARS-CoV-2 in working environments is not considered as a priority by public authorities. However, the adverse effects on the environment, food systems, and people along the food supply chain are already evident.

Key findings and conclusions: As long as we move from farm to fork, more safety measures are needed since more people (and subsequently more potential sources of infection) are involved in the process. The need for developing respective bioanalytical protocols for food and environmental safety applications to adapt in the post-lockdown period is also highlighted.

Keywords: After lockdown; Food safety; SARS-CoV-2; Supply chain; Swab tests; Virus detection.

Fig. 1

Safety measures for the food sector during the pandemic (Fig. 1A) and the most critical for each stage of the food supply chain from farm to fork (Fig. 1B).

Fig. 2

The arrangement of tables and air conditioning airflow at a site of COVID-19 outbreak in a restaurant placed in Guangzhou (China). Red chairs indicate seating of future case-patients, whereas the yellow chair indicates index case-patient. Remade from Lu et al. (2020). (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)