iFoodDS has partnered with Cornell University to offer a no-cost modeling tool for companies in the food industry, according to a news release.
The agent-based model projects the spread of COVID-19 infections in a food industry workforce, the release said.
Users can create a free account at foodcovidcontrol.com/FOODCTL/ and input the details of their operation to receive customized projections, according to the release.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted some vulnerabilities in the global food supply chain and has added new responsibilities for food safety leaders to protect employees while maintaining essential production activities,” Claire Zoellner, food safety scientist at iFoodDS, said in the release. “Collaborating on this USDA project has allowed us to continue our work on bringing new data tools and research to the food industry. We’re excited to share this model and see the impact it has for food producers and processors navigating in this new normal.”
The model accounts for the specific conditions users enter, as well as interventions like temperature checks and COVID testing. Reports include projections on infections, absences, production capacity and economic analysis, according to the release.
The first release of this tool focused on farms. Now, iFoodDS and Cornell are releasing a new version that expands the scope to processing facilities. This version also includes:
- An economic analysis that shows the total costs for each COVID intervention
- Updates for new variants and booster vaccines
The modeling tool was created with funding from a USDA grant, according to the release.
“This collaboration with iFoodDS is a great example of a successful and timely academia-industry partnership where each of us is contributing with what we do best in the most creative and effective ways, to provide the U.S. food industry a modeling tool that will aid their contingency planning in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” Renata Ivanek, associate professor of epidemiology at Cornell University and The Ivanek Epi Lab’s Principal Investigator, said in the release.
The project also benefited from the guidance of an advisory council of food safety executives from several major food processing companies.
The disease transmission dynamics are based on research studies about COVID-19 and the most current knowledge of its epidemiology. Employee characteristics and social contact networks are based on U.S. population and labor reports and expert opinions. Individual model results are calculated by running thousands of simulations based on the data each user provides. The iFoodDS and Cornell teams validated the model for various food industry sectors by running test simulations on public data, the release said.
To create an account and use the free COVID modeling tool, visit foodcovidcontrol.com/FOODCTL/.
