Food safety is moving beyond a reactive to a predictive food system, says Frank Yiannas, former Food and Drug Administration deputy commissioner, who joined “The Packer Podcast” to take a look at how emerging technologies can move the food system into the 21st century.
Yiannas says there is potential for artificial intelligence to take large volumes of data and examine it from a multidimensional view, and he says this is largely what the fresh produce industry is about.
“Produce is grown in what I call complex agricultural ecosystems, so we have to consider weather conditions, soil amendments, worker hygiene, animals, rainfall, flooding events,” he says. “There’s so much to consider that the human mind can’t do that very well alone. So, using data and predictive analytics tools, such as AI, digitizing this data, we believe that the machine can actually take data, see patterns that the human mind cannot see and predict that there might be conditions that can cause an event.”
One key to the potential benefits of AI is data sharing. He says today’s agricultural system is decentralized, where growers collect data and keep it for internal use.
“I’ve always said that in the 20th century, collaboration was about people getting in a room and just having conversations. In the 21st century, collaboration in the agricultural space has to be data sharing,” he says. “We’re living in the digital age now.”
A Need for Trust and Collaboration
Yiannas says that for the fresh produce industry to fully realize the potential of technology, it is going to take trust — trust that the data will remain anonymous. He says that while some growers may fear that data sharing will eliminate a potential competitive advantage, food safety data sharing should be looked at for the good of the industry.
Yiannas points to what often happens when an outbreak hits a commodity in the fresh produce industry space.
“When it comes to these events, food safety in particular, there’s a good chance you win and lose together, and even when there aren’t advisories, consumers get confused, and sometimes they just avoid that commodity altogether,” he says.
It’s incumbent upon the fresh produce industry to work together to ensure the food safety data shared in the future will be for the benefit of the fresh produce industry and that it will only be used for collaborative and beneficial purposes, Yiannas says.
“We as leaders have to be really cognizant of what’s the role of AI is in organizations and in people’s lives and make sure it gets used the right way,” he says. “There’s always bad, unintended consequences of new technologies. We can’t afford to let this happen with AI, I would say; we need to be mindful of it if you’re rolling it out in your place of employment, and I hope people aren’t rolling it out just as an efficiency play to try to eliminate labor.”
Tapping Into Traceability
There’s also the potential in the future for the integration of AI as the fresh produce industry prepares for FSMA 204 implementation.
“The lack of transparency or traceability in the food system is an Achilles heel,” Yiannas says. “When events happen, when you can’t track and trace food, you know you can’t pull product that’s contaminated. Or if you think about adulteration of foods intentionally, economic fraud, why does that happen? Because there’s no transparency in the bad actors, though they can do things without there being a footprint that leads to their door, and better food traceability is needed right now.”
Yiannas says good traceability helps minimize the scope of recalls and advisories, prevents illnesses and saves the food system money. He says AI has the potential to transform traceability into a dynamic and resilient system.
“When we layer on predictive analytics and tools such as AI, which we will once we start keeping and capturing these data along the entire food continuum, the benefits I think we’re going to become even more obvious to the food industry,” he says.
