How Technology is Shaping the Future of Food Safety in China and Around the World

When it comes to food safety, China is looking to the future through new disruptive technologies such as artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain and genomics that are helping to strengthen public trust and even reshape the supply chain from farm to fork around the world.

To further explore and discuss these new technologies and gather industry perspective, on June 17th , Mars China, the Mars Global Food Safety Center and the American Chamber of Commerce in China co-hosted a webinar  "Farm to Table: Food Safety Empowered by Technology”

The Mars Global Food Safety Center (GFSC), based in China, is dedicated to ensuring safe food for all, leveraging cutting edge technology and robust science to raise the bar in food safety.  During the webinar we explored the powerful role that technology and innovations are playing in helping to tackle food safety challenges.

 

The event was welcomed by the President of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, Alan Beebe and Min Qin, Vice-President for Public Affairs, Mars China.

Min Qin, Vice President of Public Affairs, Mars China, said: "COVID-19 presents many challenges for all industries. At Mars, we believe that the world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today. Mars is always thinking about the future of the food industry and is committed to sharing our research findings and experience with all parties. In the future, we will continue devoting ourselves to scientific research and product innovation in food safety, to create a better future for people and pets.”

 

Dr. Abigail Stevenson, Director at the Mars GFSC delivered a keynote speech and Dr. Guangtao Zhang, Head of Research at the Mars GFSC moderated a panel of experts from Danone, IBM, Merck, and Walmart. This conversation brought together almost 100 attendees from a diverse, cross-sector community interested in applying disruptive technologies in China in order to innovate, share best practice and deepen relationships between technology providers and adopters.

 

Dr Abigail Stevenson said: "Mars believes that multi-party collaboration is key to food safety and industry development. We actively organize and participate in industry activities to enhance the exchange of scientific and technological knowledge, cutting-edge technologies, professional insights and share best practices, and promote mutual sharing and cooperation between government, industry, universities and research institutes." She also said that science, technology and innovation is the key to food safety: "Mars is committed to sharing food safety knowledge and building capabiltiy and will continue to share research in food safety risk management, which will help enable everyone to have access to safe food.”

This panel discussion drew from the collective wisdom of renowned food safety experts across sectors as diverse as technology, agriculture, retail and food.

Dr Guangtao Zhang, Head of Research at Mars Global Food Safety Center, moderated the panel discussion, on the best practices of disruptive technology application in the food industry and supply chain. Guangtao shared his perspective on the current situation as well as recent research from the Mars Global Food Safety Center on whole genome sequencing technology for microbial risk management, and the progress of China's geography certification (GI) source rice identify through the multielement analysis technology.