Wu Participates in SRA Webinar - Covid Conversations on Risk: Food Safety and Security

May 26, 2020

IIT-afilliated faculty member, Felicia Wu, was recently featured on the Society of Risk Analysis' (SRA) COVID Conversations on Risk webinar discussing food safety and security during the COVID-19 pandemic. The SRA series of podcasts and webinars features various aspects of risk analysis and is hosted by SRA President, Seth Guikema, Ph.D., University of Michigan. The webinar adressing food safety and risk aired on April 23, 2020, with guest speakers Jade Mitchell, Ph.D., and Felicia Wu, Ph.D. both from Michigan State University. Watch the webinar on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVv9_y701zE&feature=youtu.be. 

Mitchell covers food safety as it pertains to the current coronavirus pandemic, including: How SARS-CoV-2 is believed to spread in the environment, risks or lack thereof in grocery stores, risks or lack thereof in takeout or delivery food, the roles of heat and freezing and decontamination practices, the importance of considering viral load, and statistical models that can help in quantitative microbial risk assessment. 

Wu addresses food security as it pertains specifically to the US in the current pandemic. This includes how farmers, restaurants, and other stakeholders in the food supply chain have suffered economically as a result of the pandemic; food worker risks, including local deaths of grocery store workers in Michigan and nation-wide deaths in food processing plants; how Americans have changed consumption patterns in the last month; and what this implies about how we should change policies not just during the current pandemic, but in the future.

Felicia Wu is a John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition and the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics. Her research and teaching focus on the national and global burden of environmental and foodborne disease; how regulations affect global trades and influence chemical exposures; the influence of in utero chemical exposures, nutrition and socioeconomics on infant health; and the cost effectiveness of strategies to improve food safety along supply chains in the U.S. and worldwide. Wu serves as an expert advisor to the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives of the United Nations and in 2020 she received the MSU William J. Beal Outstanding Faculty Award.