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Supply chain innovation can reduce coronavirus food shortages

Supply chain innovation can reduce coronavirus food shortages

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Empty shelves in a grocery store in Toronto on March 22, 2020 as customers stock up on dry goods and shelf-stable foods. (Shutterstock)

Food security is an essential issue brought to light by COVID-19.

The Canadian government recognized this by deeming workers across the food supply chain as an essential service. More importantly, in early May, the federal government announced $252 million in funding to farmers, food processors and food businesses to get through this pandemic.

Of the funding, $77.5 million is earmarked for food processing. This is a critical juncture: we are at a time when we need to examine food processing technology pre-COVID-19 and deploy it to make us more food secure and ready to withstand the next big challenge.

Relying on old approaches

With COVID-19, we’ve fallen back to 19th-century food technology to make us feel safe — stocking our pantries with canned foods and shelf-stable dried foods, including grains and pulses.

When considering a post-COVID-19 food system, we must focus on building resilience using modern innovation. Cutting costs should not be the only factor that informs our supply chains.


Read more: Coronavirus: The perils of our ‘just enough, just in time’ food system


Most Canadians have lifestyles that demand the convenience of processed foods while valuing nutrition. The carbon footprint of food preservation done at the industrial scale is low: life-cycle analyses of foods show that the carbon footprint of home cooking is 2.5 times that required to process the food.

Experts respond to questions about the Canadian food supply chain on CBC.

Food supply innovation tools

In designing this post-COVID-19 food system, the innovation tools are remarkably like the technology-focused terms of the pre-COVID-19 food system. Some examples are:

• Blockchain: The incorruptible traceability features of blockchain permit agricultural commodities and food ingredients to be actively traced throughout the supply chain. Therefore, if, as happened recently in Alberta, production workers get sick, preceding parts of the supply chain can be reconfigured. Products can also be readily recalled, limiting further spread of the sickness (regardless of whether the sickness stems from a pandemic virus or a food pathogen). The technology can also protect consumers from food fraud.

• Sensors, robotics and automation: Even prior to the pandemic, an industry consortium, partnered with Industry, Science and Economic Development Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, had recognized the need to better automate Canada’s $105 billion per year food processing industry in order to incentivize the growth of small- and medium-sized processors. With COVID-19 affecting skilled and semi-skilled workers on process lines, the impetus for sensor-driven, on-line quality and safety assurances, coupled with hygienic robotic automation of production lines, will solve food security fears. Cheap sensors embedded in packages can also provide quantitative assessments of food spoilage. Such innovations reduce the amount of food sent to landfills because of consumer confusion about best before dates.

• Boutique food process operations: Megaplants producing large volumes of a limited range of products have cheaper production costs, but are intrinsically inflexible. Food processors who can respond with agility to a variety of seasonal food preservation demands can better serve local food system needs. Some of these boutique processors can address agricultural food waste issues while also innovating with third generation aseptic processing technologies. This can produce nutritious high-quality foods that are shelf-stable for up to two years to deliver resilience capacity to our food system.

In addition to making the food supply chain more secure, technological innovations may also address the problem of food waste. (Shutterstock)

Refrigeration and transportation

Because most foods are perishable, refrigeration or freezing is required to preserve the food from production to consumption — a continuous system of temperature-controlled environments known as the cold chain. All of this cold chain, including the limited amount of cold-space in a consumer household, is completely reliant on uninterrupted power for refrigerant recycling.

Developing nutritious shelf-stable food innovations also addresses the cold chain’s carbon footprint. As much as 80 per cent of the emissions profile of a food product is its refrigeration footprint. More than half of all supermarket energy consumption is associated with their fridge and frozen aisles. Innovative drying practices can replace these cold chains to preserve fruits and vegetables, at the same time maintaining quality and nutrients.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau noted that Canada’s agricultural sector is interconnected.

As we enter the post-COVID-19 world of the 21st century, our call to action is to renovate our food supply chains so that they readily absorb the effects of the next big challenge. It’s now up to all the food system actors represented on the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council to ensure the new investments make a positive and lasting change across the production chain to benefit both consumers and the environment.

Martin Scanlon is affiliated with Association of Canadian Faculties of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine. He receives funding from NSERC Canada and commodity agencies and has received funding for research projects from food processors.

Rene Van Acker is affiliated with the Association of Canadian Faculties of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine. He receives funding from NSERC Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs and agricultural commodity organizations.

rickey.yada@ubc.ca is affiliated with Association of Canadian Faculties of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine; AgResearch, New Zealand; Riddet Institute, New Zealand; Bioenterprise Corporation Canada; Arrell Food Institute; Seeding Food Innovation (George Weston); International Life Sciences Institute - North America. He receives funding from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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Southwest and United Airlines have bad news for passengers

Both airlines are facing the same problem, one that could lead to higher airfares and fewer flight options.

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Airlines operate in a market that's dictated by supply and demand: If more people want to fly a specific route than there are available seats, then tickets on those flights cost more.

That makes scheduling and predicting demand a huge part of maximizing revenue for airlines. There are, however, numerous factors that go into how airlines decide which flights to put on the schedule.

Related: Major airline faces Chapter 11 bankruptcy concerns

Every airport has only a certain number of gates, flight slots and runway capacity, limiting carriers' flexibility. That's why during times of high demand — like flights to Las Vegas during Super Bowl week — do not usually translate to airlines sending more planes to and from that destination.

Airlines generally do try to add capacity every year. That's become challenging as Boeing has struggled to keep up with demand for new airplanes. If you can't add airplanes, you can't grow your business. That's caused problems for the entire industry. 

Every airline retires planes each year. In general, those get replaced by newer, better models that offer more efficiency and, in most cases, better passenger amenities. 

If an airline can't get the planes it had hoped to add to its fleet in a given year, it can face capacity problems. And it's a problem that both Southwest Airlines (LUV) and United Airlines have addressed in a way that's inevitable but bad for passengers. 

Southwest Airlines has not been able to get the airplanes it had hoped to.

Image source: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Southwest slows down its pilot hiring

In 2023, Southwest made a huge push to hire pilots. The airline lost thousands of pilots to retirement during the covid pandemic and it needed to replace them in order to build back to its 2019 capacity.

The airline successfully did that but will not continue that trend in 2024.

"Southwest plans to hire approximately 350 pilots this year, and no new-hire classes are scheduled after this month," Travel Weekly reported. "Last year, Southwest hired 1,916 pilots, according to pilot recruitment advisory firm Future & Active Pilot Advisors. The airline hired 1,140 pilots in 2022." 

The slowdown in hiring directly relates to the airline expecting to grow capacity only in the low-single-digits percent in 2024.

"Moving into 2024, there is continued uncertainty around the timing of expected Boeing deliveries and the certification of the Max 7 aircraft. Our fleet plans remain nimble and currently differs from our contractual order book with Boeing," Southwest Airlines Chief Financial Officer Tammy Romo said during the airline's fourth-quarter-earnings call

"We are planning for 79 aircraft deliveries this year and expect to retire roughly 45 700 and 4 800, resulting in a net expected increase of 30 aircraft this year."

That's very modest growth, which should not be enough of an increase in capacity to lower prices in any significant way.

United Airlines pauses pilot hiring

Boeing's  (BA)  struggles have had wide impact across the industry. United Airlines has also said it was going to pause hiring new pilots through the end of May.

United  (UAL)  Fight Operations Vice President Marc Champion explained the situation in a memo to the airline's staff.

"As you know, United has hundreds of new planes on order, and while we remain on path to be the fastest-growing airline in the industry, we just won't grow as fast as we thought we would in 2024 due to continued delays at Boeing," he said.

"For example, we had contractual deliveries for 80 Max 10s this year alone, but those aircraft aren't even certified yet, and it's impossible to know when they will arrive." 

That's another blow to consumers hoping that multiple major carriers would grow capacity, putting pressure on fares. Until Boeing can get back on track, it's unlikely that competition between the large airlines will lead to lower fares.  

In fact, it's possible that consumer demand will grow more than airline capacity which could push prices higher.

Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024

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Simple blood test could predict risk of long-term COVID-19 lung problems

UVA Health researchers have discovered a potential way to predict which patients with severe COVID-19 are likely to recover well and which are likely to…

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UVA Health researchers have discovered a potential way to predict which patients with severe COVID-19 are likely to recover well and which are likely to suffer “long-haul” lung problems. That finding could help doctors better personalize treatments for individual patients.

Credit: UVA Health

UVA Health researchers have discovered a potential way to predict which patients with severe COVID-19 are likely to recover well and which are likely to suffer “long-haul” lung problems. That finding could help doctors better personalize treatments for individual patients.

UVA’s new research also alleviates concerns that severe COVID-19 could trigger relentless, ongoing lung scarring akin to the chronic lung disease known as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, the researchers report. That type of continuing lung damage would mean that patients’ ability to breathe would continue to worsen over time.

“We are excited to find that people with long-haul COVID have an immune system that is totally different from people who have lung scarring that doesn’t stop,” said researcher Catherine A. Bonham, MD, a pulmonary and critical care expert who serves as scientific director of UVA Health’s Interstitial Lung Disease Program. “This offers hope that even patients with the worst COVID do not have progressive scarring of the lung that leads to death.”

Long-Haul COVID-19

Up to 30% of patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 continue to suffer persistent symptoms months after recovering from the virus. Many of these patients develop lung scarring – some early on in their hospitalization, and others within six months of their initial illness, prior research has found. Bonham and her collaborators wanted to better understand why this scarring occurs, to determine if it is similar to progressive pulmonary fibrosis and to see if there is a way to identify patients at risk.

To do this, the researchers followed 16 UVA Health patients who had survived severe COVID-19. Fourteen had been hospitalized and placed on a ventilator. All continued to have trouble breathing and suffered fatigue and abnormal lung function at their first outpatient checkup.

After six months, the researchers found that the patients could be divided into two groups: One group’s lung health improved, prompting the researchers to label them “early resolvers,” while the other group, dubbed “late resolvers,” continued to suffer lung problems and pulmonary fibrosis. 

Looking at blood samples taken before the patients’ recovery began to diverge, the UVA team found that the late resolvers had significantly fewer immune cells known as monocytes circulating in their blood. These white blood cells play a critical role in our ability to fend off disease, and the cells were abnormally depleted in patients who continued to suffer lung problems compared both to those who recovered and healthy control subjects. 

Further, the decrease in monocytes correlated with the severity of the patients’ ongoing symptoms. That suggests that doctors may be able to use a simple blood test to identify patients likely to become long-haulers — and to improve their care.

“About half of the patients we examined still had lingering, bothersome symptoms and abnormal tests after six months,” Bonham said. “We were able to detect differences in their blood from the first visit, with fewer blood monocytes mapping to lower lung function.”

The researchers also wanted to determine if severe COVID-19 could cause progressive lung scarring as in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. They found that the two conditions had very different effects on immune cells, suggesting that even when the symptoms were similar, the underlying causes were very different. This held true even in patients with the most persistent long-haul COVID-19 symptoms. “Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is progressive and kills patients within three to five years,” Bonham said. “It was a relief to see that all our COVID patients, even those with long-haul symptoms, were not similar.”

Because of the small numbers of participants in UVA’s study, and because they were mostly male (for easier comparison with IPF, a disease that strikes mostly men), the researchers say larger, multi-center studies are needed to bear out the findings. But they are hopeful that their new discovery will provide doctors a useful tool to identify COVID-19 patients at risk for long-haul lung problems and help guide them to recovery.

“We are only beginning to understand the biology of how the immune system impacts pulmonary fibrosis,” Bonham said. “My team and I were humbled and grateful to work with the outstanding patients who made this study possible.” 

Findings Published

The researchers have published their findings in the scientific journal Frontiers in Immunology. The research team consisted of Grace C. Bingham, Lyndsey M. Muehling, Chaofan Li, Yong Huang, Shwu-Fan Ma, Daniel Abebayehu, Imre Noth, Jie Sun, Judith A. Woodfolk, Thomas H. Barker and Bonham. Noth disclosed that he has received personal fees from Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech and Confo unrelated to the research project. In addition, he has a patent pending related to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Bonham and all other members of the research team had no financial conflicts to disclose.

The UVA research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, grants R21 AI160334 and U01 AI125056; NIH’s National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, grants 5K23HL143135-04 and UG3HL145266; UVA’s Engineering in Medicine Seed Fund; the UVA Global Infectious Diseases Institute’s COVID-19 Rapid Response; a UVA Robert R. Wagner Fellowship; and a Sture G. Olsson Fellowship in Engineering.

  

To keep up with the latest medical research news from UVA, subscribe to the Making of Medicine blog at http://makingofmedicine.virginia.edu.


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Looking Back At COVID’s Authoritarian Regimes

After having moved from Canada to the United States, partly to be wealthier and partly to be freer (those two are connected, by the way), I was shocked,…

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After having moved from Canada to the United States, partly to be wealthier and partly to be freer (those two are connected, by the way), I was shocked, in March 2020, when President Trump and most US governors imposed heavy restrictions on people’s freedom. The purpose, said Trump and his COVID-19 advisers, was to “flatten the curve”: shut down people’s mobility for two weeks so that hospitals could catch up with the expected demand from COVID patients. In her book Silent Invasion, Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, admitted that she was scrambling during those two weeks to come up with a reason to extend the lockdowns for much longer. As she put it, “I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.” In short, she chose the goal and then tried to find the data to justify the goal. This, by the way, was from someone who, along with her task force colleague Dr. Anthony Fauci, kept talking about the importance of the scientific method. By the end of April 2020, the term “flatten the curve” had all but disappeared from public discussion.

Now that we are four years past that awful time, it makes sense to look back and see whether those heavy restrictions on the lives of people of all ages made sense. I’ll save you the suspense. They didn’t. The damage to the economy was huge. Remember that “the economy” is not a term used to describe a big machine; it’s a shorthand for the trillions of interactions among hundreds of millions of people. The lockdowns and the subsequent federal spending ballooned the budget deficit and consequent federal debt. The effect on children’s learning, not just in school but outside of school, was huge. These effects will be with us for a long time. It’s not as if there wasn’t another way to go. The people who came up with the idea of lockdowns did so on the basis of abstract models that had not been tested. They ignored a model of human behavior, which I’ll call Hayekian, that is tested every day.

These are the opening two paragraphs of my latest Defining Ideas article, “Looking Back at COVID’s Authoritarian Regimes,” Defining Ideas, March 14, 2024.

Another excerpt:

That wasn’t the only uncertainty. My daughter Karen lived in San Francisco and made her living teaching Pilates. San Francisco mayor London Breed shut down all the gyms, and so there went my daughter’s business. (The good news was that she quickly got online and shifted many of her clients to virtual Pilates. But that’s another story.) We tried to see her every six weeks or so, whether that meant our driving up to San Fran or her driving down to Monterey. But were we allowed to drive to see her? In that first month and a half, we simply didn’t know.

Read the whole thing, which is longer than usual.

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