A Framework for Enabling Safe and Resilient Food Factories for Public Feeding Programs

ABSTRACT

Public feeding programs continue to be a major source of nutrition to a large part of the population across the world. Any disruption to food factories that support these activities, like the one during the Covid-19 pandemic, can lead to adverse health outcomes, especially among children. Policymakers and other stakeholders must balance the need for continuing food-factory operations while ensuring the health and safety of workers. This has led to several innovations that leverage advanced technologies like AI and IoT to monitor the health and safety of workers and ensure hygienic operations. However, there are practical challenges in its implementation on a large scale.This paper presents an implementation framework to build resilient food factories for public feeding using a combination of intelligent technologies. The framework is a result of piloting the technology solution at a facility run as part of a large mid-day meal feeding program in India. Using existing resources like CCTV cameras and new technologies like AI and IoT, hygiene and safety compliance anomalies can be detected and reported in a resource-efficient manner. It will guide stakeholders running food factories for public feeding as they seek to restart suspended operations and build systems that better adapt to future crises. © 2021 IEEE.