Covid-19 pandemic in the lens of food safety and security

Abstract

The recently emerged coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which has been characterised as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO), is impacting all parts of human society including agriculture, manufacturing, and tertiary sectors involving all service provision industries. This paper aims to give an overview of potential host reservoirs that could cause pandemic outbreak caused by zoonotic transmission. Amongst all, continues surveillance in slaughterhouse for possible pathogens transmission is needed to prevent next pandemic outbreak. This paper also summarizes the potential threats of pandemic to agriculture and aquaculture sector that control almost the total food supply chain and market. The history lesson from the past, emerging and reemerging infectious disease including the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2002, Influenza A H1N1 (swine flu) in 2009, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012 and the recent COVID-19 should give us some clue to improve especially the governance to be more ready for next coming pandemic.

Keywords: Food safety; Food security; Food supply chain; Pandemic.

Fig. 1

Flow diagram of the international supply chain for agricultural and food sector during the pandemic. The diagram is drawn using process description languages of System Biology Graphical Notation edge: inhibition; production direction; stimulation; and catalysis. Nodes: location; phenotype (domestic situation); perturbing agent; complex (stimuli); and unspecific entity. MCO - movement control order; SME – small-medium enterprise. The construction method of the SBGN diagram is described in Mohd Khalim et al. (2017).

Fig. 2

Flow diagram of the domestic (local) supply chain for agricultural and food sector during the pandemic. The diagram was drawn using entity relationship languages of System Biology Graphical Notation edge: inhibition; production direction; stimulation; and catalysis. Nodes: location; phenotype (domestic situation); perturbing agent; complex (stimuli); and unspecific entity. MCO - movement control order; SME – small-medium enterprise. The construction method of the SBGN diagram is described in Mohd Khalim et al. (2017).

Fig. 3

Global fishing activity (hours, represented by the white dots) for the periods (a) before COVID-19 outbreak (Jan–Feb 2020), (b) after COVID-19 outbreak (Mar–Apr 2020), and (c) fishing activity relative to the year 2019 for the same periods. The data points of fishing activity in (a) and (b) were collected using the Automatic Identification System (AIS) broadcast signals in each vessel and analysed according to the Global Fishing Watch's fishing detection algorithm (Source: Global Fishing Watch, https://globalfishingwatch.org/).