
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic came a host of new concerns for food businesses: Is COVID-19 a foodborne illness? How do we prevent it from spreading at work? Sabina Shrestha, a grocery retail employee worker in Nepal, faced that uncertainty.
However, Shrestha received critical guidance to protect herself, her coworkers and her community through live, online access to food safety experts provided as part of a project funded by the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety (FSIL) and led by Martin Wiedmann, professor of food science at Cornell University. Designed to prevent food system disruptions during the pandemic, the project delivered tools and resources to reduce person-to-person COVID-19 transmission in all parts of the food system.
“Virtual office hours helped me understand the necessity to stay isolated and not work in the store if I get infected from COVID-19, [even] though I am asymptomatic,” said Shrestha.
Shrestha was one of 1,000 food industry members, researchers, government officials and consumers in Africa and Southeast Asia who attended the online COVID-19 food safety office hours. The office hours were hosted by members of a newly developed international task force mentored by food safety experts at the Institute for Food Safety at Cornell (IFS@CU). The 19 sessions, held over six months, provided science-based information on COVID-19 and protocols to reduce transmission in food businesses and address industry questions that ranged from the vaccine to the application of non-food-grade sanitizers to foods.
Among the more than 200 questions answered through the sessions, one question came up again and again: Is COVID-19 foodborne? While there was no evidence of COVID-19 transmission through food, misinformation about using bleach, disinfectants or other chemicals to treat produce spawned new food safety risks.
“The experience of attending the virtual meeting on food industry in the time of corona helped my business,” said Manisha Maharjan, an employee at Twakka, a pickle processing business in Kathmandu, Nepal, who had been concerned that produce should be decontaminated before processing. “[W]ashing vegetables with soap or detergent was completely unnecessary.”
Understanding COVID-19 was not foodborne allowed businesses to prioritize actions to reduce transmission. For example, after participation in office hours, Sela Pepper Co., a food processing company in Memot, Cambodia, implemented social distancing in the workplace, temperature checks for workers and frequent meetings to keep COVID-19 symptoms in the forefront of workers’ minds, according to Sela Pepper quality control supervisor, Snguon Lom Orng.
“We received positive feedback from food businesses regarding office hours and translated resources,” said task force member Dr. Jaya Kumar Gurung, executive director of the Nepal Development Research Institute (NDRI). “We gave a clear understanding of myths regarding COVID-19 and helped food businesses a lot to avoid disruptions and in responding to a COVID-19 outbreak at their business.”
The country-specific office hours proved scalable and were expanded to Pan-African and Pan-Asian sessions. In addition to the office hours, Gurung and task force colleagues Dr. Latiful Bari (Bangladesh), Dr. Chay Chim (Cambodia), Dr. George Ooko Abong’ (Kenya) and Dr. Cheikh Ndiaye (Senegal) worked with IFS@CU to create a centralized online hub for reliable, web-based resources. The 25 country-specific resources, in Bangla, French, Khmer, Nepali and Swahili, included food facility COVID-19 strategy checklists, a guide to prioritizing COVID-19 control strategies, food industry frequently asked questions (FAQs) and a guide to handling fresh produce. Video FAQs provided information on the most important COVID-19 transmission pathways and how to reduce person-to-person spread. According to co-principal investigator Aljosa Trmcic, the interaction during office hours was important in the development of online resources.
“We found that office hours were a two-way street: useful information was flowing in both directions,” said Trmcic, an extension associate at Cornell. “We had a chance to hear about the problems and concerns participants were having and were able to directly respond to them with solutions and new online resources.”
Although the project focused primarily on technical, organizational and personnel measures to reduce person-to-person COVID-19 transmission throughout the food system, the project’s scalable approach and network of experts could be mobilized to address future pandemics or natural disasters which threaten the food systems in these and other countries.
“This emergency response project demonstrated the value of mobilizing a global network to address shared food system challenges,” said co-principal investigator Elizabeth Demmings, program coordinator with IFS@CU.
Amanda Garris is a communications specialist with the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety.