Food security depends on a network of actors and elements working together to produce and deliver healthy, sustainable, varied, safe and plentiful food supply to society. The interactions between these actors and elements must be designed, managed and optimized to satisfy demand. In this chapter we introduce Food Supply Chain Optimization and Demand, providing a framework to understand and improve food security from an operational and strategic point of view.
This chapter discusses supply chain management responses used by companies in the food supply chain during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter first discusses the relevant literature on supply chain resilience. The chapter subsequently reviews supply chain responses in relation to different supply chain resilience capabilities, and then discusses the theory and practice of supply chain capabilities in food supply chains.
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The composition of diets and supplements given to bovine cattle are constantly evolving. These changes are driven by the social call for a more sustainable beef and dairy production, interests to influence the nutritional value of bovine products for human consumption, and to increase animal health. These adaptations can introduce (new) compounds in the beef and milk supply chain. Currently, the golden standard to study transfer of compounds from feed or veterinary medicine to cows and consequences for human health is performing animal studies, which are time consuming, costly and thus limited. Although animal studies are increasingly debated for ethical reasons, cows are still in the top 10 list of most used animals for animal experiments in Europe. There is, however, no widely applicable alternative modelling tool available to rapidly predict transfer of compounds, apart from individual components like cattle kinetic models and simple in vitro kinetic assays. Therefore, this project aims to develop a first-of-a-kind generic bovine kinetic modelling platform that predicts the transfer of compounds from medicine/supplements and feed to bovine tissues. This will provide new tools for the efficacy and safety evaluation of veterinary medicine and feed and facilitates a rapid evaluation of human health effects of bovine origin food products, thereby contributing to an increased safety in the cattle production chain and supporting product innovations, all without animal testing. This will be accomplished by integrating existing in silico and in vitro techniques into a generic bovine modelling platform and further developing state-of-the-art in vitro bovine organoid cell culturing systems. The platform can be used world-wide by stakeholders involved in the cattle industry (feed-/veterinary medicine industry, regulators, risk assessors). The project partners involve a strong combination of academia, knowledge institutes, small and medium enterprises, industry, branche-organisations and Proefdiervrij, all driven by their pursuit for animal free innovations.
It is predicted that 5 million rural jobs will have disappeared before 2016. These changes do notonly concern farmers. In their decline all food chain related SMEs will be affected severely. Newbusiness opportunities can be found in short food supply chains. However, they can onlysucceed if handled professionally and on a proper scale. This presents opportunities on 4interconnected strands:Collect market relevant regional dataDevelop innovative specialisation strategies for SMEsForge new forms of regional cooperation and partnership based on common benefits andshared values.Acquire specific skillsREFRAME takes up these challenges. In a living lab of 5 regional pilots, partners willdemonstrate the Regional Food Frame (RFF) as an effective set of measures to scale up andaccommodate urban food demands and regional supplies. New data will reveal the regions’ ownstrengths and resources to match food demand and supply. REFRAME provides a supportinfrastructure for food related SMEs to develop and implement their smart specializationstrategies in food chains on the urban-rural axis. On their way towards a RFF, all pilots will use a5-step road map. A transnational learning lab will be set up in support of skill development andtraining of all stakeholders. REFRAME pools the know-how needed to set up these Regional FoodFrames in a transnational network of experts, each closely linked and footed in its own pilotregion.
