Is the source of the new epidemic situation to be solved? Is the cold chain logistics reliable?
The origin of the epidemic in the Xinfadi wholesale market in Beijing is still an unsolved mystery.
However, Cold Chain has been regarded as a “suspect” since the first day. Since then, more and more rheological results show that the environmental samples of the aquatic hall and beef and mutton hall of the Xinfadi wholesale market have more positive tests for new coronavirus. Among those who have been diagnosed with New Coronary Pneumonia, the sales staff of aquatic products have the most and the earliest.
A number of experts interviewed by reporters from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily said recently that the final investigation of the new epidemic-related epidemic has not yet been completed, and it cannot be determined that the new coronavirus has entered the new epidemic market via cold chain logistics. However, experts also pointed out that the low temperature environment created for preservation may create an opportunity for the survival of the new coronavirus.
According to the latest data from the Cold Chain Logistics Professional Committee of the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing (hereinafter referred to as the "China Federation of Cold Chain Committee"), in 2019, the total demand for cold chain nationwide will reach 23308 million tons. This industry, which has fed more than 1 million logistics personnel and also made people more happy from the table, is it the culprit of the epidemic, what risks are hidden, and how will it change after the epidemic?
A discussion started on a chopping board
After being calm for 56 days, on June 11, Beijing suddenly reported a diagnosis of a new patient with pneumonia. Mr. Tang, a 52-year-old patient, clearly recalled his trajectory in the past 10 days, especially about the purchasing experience of Xinfadi, which helped the traffickers to quickly lock in Xinfadi, the largest agricultural and sideline products wholesale market in Asia. There may be a strong correlation with the patient's infection.
On the early morning of June 12, the beef and mutton trading hall and the seafood hall of the Xinfadi Market were suspended, and the relocation staff began to intensively enter the Xinfadi Wholesale Market for sampling.
In a report that evening, Zhang Yuxi, chairman of the Xinfadi wholesale market, told the media that the new coronavirus was detected on the cutting board for cutting imported salmon.
At 3:00 on June 13, the relevant departments of Fengtai District in Beijing announced that the Xinfadi wholesale market was temporarily closed. The discussion among the public on whether "eating salmon will be infected with the new crown virus" has exploded.
Guan Yi, director of the State Key Laboratory of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Hong Kong and director of the Influenza Research Center, told the media that in the case of Xinfa, cold chain transmission or people entering the market cause transmission. Both possibilities exist.
Guan Yi said that the spread of the new crown virus through the cold chain is not new. He even pointed out that this possibility is the greatest. There have been many examples before: New Crown outbreaks broke out in many slaughterhouses in Europe and the United States, and 60% of the crew members of the USS Theodore Roosevelt's crew tested positive for the new crown virus antibody. Guan Yi believes that aircraft carriers that have not docked for several months have also become infected, and the cold chain may have played a role as a disseminator.
Li Fengqin, director of the Microbiology Laboratory of the National Food Safety Risk Assessment Center, said that the World Health Organization has made it clear that the new coronavirus is mainly transmitted through the respiratory tract, droplets and close contact. All foods, including seafood, will not be infected with the new coronavirus, but there is Possibly contaminated.
"So far, no cases of spreading New Coronary Pneumonia through food have been found at home and abroad." Li Fengqin mentioned, "If New Corona virus contaminates food or food packaging, it will not reproduce on the surface of food and food packaging materials and survive at room temperature. The time is relatively short. However, at low temperatures, the new corona virus survives longer, so at present, it is not excluded that low-temperature refrigerated food and food packaging materials are used as viral vectors, causing the new corona virus to pollute the environment and cause the possibility of spread."
Wu Zunyou, chief expert in epidemiology at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said that researchers routinely collect biological samples containing viruses through low-temperature storage. The lower the temperature, the longer the virus will survive. Many seafood in the wholesale market is stored frozen. Under such circumstances, the virus is more likely to survive, and the probability of infecting people is relatively large.
As to how long the upper limit of survival time is, it has not been determined yet. Academician Li Lanjuan said that under normal circumstances, the virus can survive in the cold chain for a long time. Viruses known and mastered by humans can survive for more than 36 months at about 4°C, and can survive for long periods of about 20 years below minus 20°C.
Li Lanjuan said that the new coronavirus is a new virus, only 8 months after its emergence, and its understanding and low temperature tolerance needs further research.
Lan Hongjie, a professor at the School of Economics and Management of Beijing Jiaotong University, has devoted himself to cold chain logistics management research for many years. She believes that there are two main possibilities for the outbreak in the new place: the virus enters the new place through contaminated items, or is brought to the new place through infected people, especially those with mild or asymptomatic infections. But to get the final accurate conclusion, more sample collection and investigation are needed.
Any link that uses labor may be contaminated
According to Qin Yuming, Secretary-General of the Cold Chain Committee of the Chinese Internet of Things, my country's cold chain logistics only made a qualitative leap during the 2008 Olympic Games. The first cold chain plan issued by the National Development and Reform Commission in 2010 led to the popularization of the cold chain concept. In recent years, the nationwide warehouse and distribution network layout in the cold chain industry has gradually taken shape.
Qin Yuming said that since 2018, the demand for the national cold chain has erupted. In an interview with the China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily, a person from the Cold Chain Committee of the China Internet of Things mentioned that in recent years, the demand for cold chain logistics has grown by leaps and bounds. Compared with 2014, the total demand of cold chain increased by 153% in 2019.
Food is the main object of cold chain logistics. Lan Hongjie said that the industry has developed faster than GDP. Whether it is Norwegian salmon or tropical fruit in Hainan, it has to be transported to all parts of the country by cold chain.
She gave an example to illustrate the role of the cold chain: "Every day Beijing needs 2.5 tons of vegetables, 1850 tons of pork, 2500 tons of rice, 3750 tons of noodles and 800 tons of eggs. 80% of these come from other provinces and cities, and all need temperature control. Beijing has 11 A slaughterhouse, the original number is 14. "At a moment you don't know, it is possible to eat food from the cold chain.
A plate of salmon sashimi goes from the place of origin to the table, going through "pre-cooling of origin-wholesale market of origin / cold storage assembly-distribution center-wholesale market of sales place-retail store (front warehouse)-fresh self-lifting point / self-lifting cabinet "A series of processes.
"Several major links include transportation, warehousing, packaging, loading and unloading handling, circulation processing, distribution and other steps." Lan Hongjie introduced, "Generally, loopholes are not easy to appear at fixed points. When handling, packaging, circulation processing It is manual and may be contaminated."
The cold chain logistics industry is developing rapidly, but supporting facilities such as supervision and standards are far from perfect.
A fruit merchant who has been buying goods in Xinfadi for many years said that many large wholesale markets are not strict in sampling agricultural products, and most use simple instruments to check pesticides for heavy metal residues. Merchants are looking for cold chain logistics, and they are also used to finding which one is cheaper. "The health certificates of freight forwarders are not guaranteed to be available to everyone."
Another food safety risk comes from "cold chain breakage", which means that it is not transported and stored at the specified temperature throughout the process. Aquatic products, vegetables, fruits, dairy products, meat and other foods require different temperatures.
In the large-scale farmer's market, the process of loading, unloading and handling is still far from fully automated, and the final step is finally completed by relatively cheap manual labor.
Lan Hongjie inspected dozens of logistics companies related to the cold chain, as well as supermarkets and farmer's markets in the wholesale and retail links, and concluded that the strict food chain throughout the entire life cycle is very difficult to achieve.
And this issue has been pointed out in a conspicuous position in almost every article that talks about the immature development of cold chain logistics in recent years. In the "China Cold Chain Logistics Development Report (2019)", the Cold Chain Committee of the China Internet of Things pointed out that there are 5 main problems in the cold chain logistics industry: imbalance of cold chain infrastructure in some regions; most agricultural products are produced in the cold chain "the first one kilometer "Insufficient supporting facilities; cold storage in first-tier cities is in short supply, but third-tier cities have excessive signs.
People who do not understand the cold chain will be curious, but just stuff food into various types of "large refrigerators", and what other investment is needed besides electricity bills and "large refrigerators".
In fact, the cold chain is not a simple process of transporting goods from the origin to the market using foam boxes and ice packs. For example, in the cold storage, a "cold processing" must be completed in accordance with the process, the cold storage and the frozen items should be separated, and finally put into the "big refrigerator" cooling room and freezing room of the cold storage. Refrigerated vehicles also have refrigeration units and thermally insulated compartments. The products have LTL and whole vehicle transportation. LTL is similar to the goods to "carpool". How to prevent the products from polluting each other and how to get the "passengers" of the "carpool" together as soon as possible is also a test. When walking in front of consumers, the reason why most of the time is ice bags and foam boxes, because the problem of cold chain distribution "last mile" has not been solved, so I chose the traditional method.
How can cold chain logistics be safer
According to reports, the viral gene sequence detected in the new market is similar to the currently published European viral gene sequence. This discovery pushes speculation that cold chain logistics brings foreign contaminated goods into the domestic vegetable market to a higher level.
According to the forecast of the American Food Association, the annual growth rate of China's imported food consumption will remain above 15%. In 2019, China has become the largest food importer.
Customs is the first line of defense for foreign food entering the country. According to the Cold Chain Committee of the Chinese Food and Wine Federation, the Chinese Customs has complete and strict safety prevention and control measures. There are a total of "three customs" to ensure the quality and safety of imported food, including "access" for countries and regions that export food to China, and production of food exported to China. "Registration customs" for enterprises and "Recording customs" for food importers and exporters to China.
These checkpoints have continued to operate since the outbreak of the new coronary pneumonia. Since June 17, China Customs has suspended the export of products from a German pork slaughtering and division and cold storage company to China because the pork slaughtering company has confirmed that a new coronavirus aggregated infection has occurred. Due to the recent occurrence of a new infection of employees' new coronary pneumonia by Tyson in the United States, since June 21, the General Administration of Customs has also suspended the company's poultry slaughter products from importing into China.
Song Yueqian, deputy director of the Department of Health and Quarantine of the General Administration of Customs, said that since February this year, some customs have started sampling nucleic acid tests on some commodities, and the results are all negative. At present, the National Customs has carried out new coronavirus risk monitoring on fresh cold chain products from countries and regions with high risk of epidemics.
Lan Hongjie mentioned that the outbreak in the new place reminded us that we should formulate a plan for the logistics transformation and upgrading of the wholesale market and do a good job in food safety testing. We must strictly control food safety through the wholesale market.
Lan Hongjie mentioned that logistics facilities and equipment should be upgraded and renovated; in particular, the level of informatization should be improved, and big data should be used to ensure the traceability of the entire food process; various national standards on cold chain and food safety, Local standards are firmly implemented.
"Standards are being developed quickly and the industry is developing rapidly, but the implementation is not in place." Lan Hongjie said.
The Cold Chain Committee of China Internet of Things suggested that the current cold chain logistics standard system in China is not perfect, the standard involves a wide range of technologies, and there are many management departments. It is difficult for all parties to coordinate, resulting in repeated contradictions in the formulation process, and the effect of promotion and implementation after the release is not obvious , Lack of efficient standardization coordination promotion mechanism and other issues. Different industry standards lack compatibility and connectivity in operation.
According to the researchers, at present, my country's cold chain logistics is still in the initial stage of development, and there is still a large gap with developed countries such as Japan, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Canada in terms of standardization.
In the face of the epidemic, there is danger. The Cold Chain Committee of the China Internet of Things has proposed 12 suggestions to promote the growth of the cold chain logistics industry. It mentioned that it is necessary to take this opportunity to strengthen the safety protection in the cold chain logistics process, promote intensive management, and reduce the contact between people and goods; To improve the organization and digital capabilities of enterprises, use technology to promote the industry to complete the traceability and visualization work, and better resource scheduling.
Many experts emphasized on multiple occasions that, in the final analysis, the polluted environment wants to cause illness, or is it because the body parts in contact with the pollutants touched the nose and mouth, and they have taken personal protective measures such as wearing masks and washing hands frequently problem.
China Youth Daily · China Youth Daily reporter Hu Ning, intern Hu Luxin Source: China Youth Daily