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.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Safety (FSIL)<\/a>\u00a0and 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.<\/p>\n \u201cVirtual 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,\u201d said Shrestha.<\/p>\n 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\u00a0Institute for Food Safety at Cornell (IFS@CU)<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe experience of attending the virtual meeting on food industry in the time of corona helped my business,\u201d 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. \u201c[W]ashing vegetables with soap or detergent was completely unnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u2019 minds, according to Sela Pepper quality control supervisor, Snguon Lom Orng.<\/p>\n \u201cWe received positive feedback from food businesses regarding office hours and translated resources,\u201d said task force member Dr. Jaya Kumar Gurung, executive director of the\u00a0Nepal Development Research Institute (NDRI)<\/a>. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n