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in the Food and Feed Industry by Donald Hamm, Senior vice-President, Sales and Marketing, Zirconia Inc, USA Biosecurity after the COVID-19 pandemic might need to be re-defined. Donald Hamm looks at safety; safety in the workplace and safety that includes the product, the customer, the assets, the employees and the environment. He suggests that the technology used in the past is necessarily the answer going forward. The food sector and millers in particular need to look to new technology and new answers to a 'new post-COVID-19 normal' era and suggests that what we have been doing might no longer be enough
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afety and design have long been partnered together in the construction industry, and this pairing is the basis for many building codes that have been developed globally. We have safety codes related to fire, physical safety of occupants and many more, but there has been little attention to biosafety in the design industry, with only a few exceptions up to now. Most of these exceptions have been based around food chain production and health care, and are not the conversations many focus on, unless they are your specialisation. Clearly, global awareness of this has become an issue and major
38 | January 2021 - Milling and Grain
changes are happening with the COVID-19 pandemic and the effect it has had across all industries. What I am going to look at in this article is a shift in how we look at our projects and operations in terms of safety. When we talk about safety in the workplace, we need to make sure we include safety of the product, the customer, assets, employees and the environment. It is important that we not just assume the technology we have known and used in the past is the answer going forward. We need to look for new technology and new answers as our 'new normal' has shown what we have been doing is not enough.
Understanding contamination
First, we need to understand what we are talking about when we discuss biosecurity in regard to micro-organisms like bacteria, viruses and fungi. For contamination to occur several things must be in place. The first is a transport method to move the organisms to a new surface and after air movement, that is usually us. Once a living organism is on a surface it needs several things to survive: food, water and habitat. Anything that provides these three things is a host. Most porous