Global Food Security (Food Sovereignty Movements), Bioterrorism & A.I: Opportunities and Challenges for Global Food Regulatory Systems.

Abstract

Food sovereignty and global food security are facing increasing pressure from population growth, climate change, geopolitical conflicts, environmental degradation, pandemics and disruptions in international trade. The interconnectedness across global markets and it is creating vulnerability that might impact the accessibility, food availability, utilisation, and stability of food resources. Bioterrorism and agroterrorism are presenting additional threats as there is deliberate contamination of livestock, crops and food and it is creating public health issues and having economic and trade consequences.  The implication of the review is to examine the relationship between food sovereignty, food security, biological threats and emerging use of AI, digital technology and robotics in the food regulatory system. The review is going to address how the traditional CARVER+Shock Vulnerability-assessment approach and  AI, Machine learning, IoT and big-data analytics are going to support contamination detection, predictive analytics, automated inspection, disease surveillance and end-to-end traceability required in food regulation. The review is going to draw understanding from Covid-19, in particular the relationship to transportation, trade, cultural labour, certification and inspection and how this caused the introduction of the need for technology-resilient governance. The synthesis of the research study showed that digital technologies have the capacity to shift food regulation from dominantly reactive approaches to more continuous, preventive, proactive and predictive approaches. However, implementation of digital technologies is mostly constrained by investment and infrastructure gaps that are followed by cybersecurity and privacy risks, data quality risks, ethical oversight, algorithmic bias, limited technological capacity and inconsistency with international standards. The review has emphasised that there are required means of integration capacity, building international collaboration, ethical oversight, integrated governance, public-private partnership and equitable access for digital infrastructure to strengthen food sovereignty, global food security and food defence.