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Complexity of the International Agro-Food Trade Network and Its Impact on Food Safety
With the world’s population now in excess of 7 billion, it is vital to ensure the chemical and microbiological safety of our food, while maintaining the sustainability of its production, distribution and trade. Using UN databases, here we show that the international agro-food trade network (IFTN), w...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2012
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3365103/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22701535 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0037810 |
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author | Ercsey-Ravasz, Mária Toroczkai, Zoltán Lakner, Zoltán Baranyi, József |
author_facet | Ercsey-Ravasz, Mária Toroczkai, Zoltán Lakner, Zoltán Baranyi, József |
author_sort | Ercsey-Ravasz, Mária |
collection | PubMed |
description | With the world’s population now in excess of 7 billion, it is vital to ensure the chemical and microbiological safety of our food, while maintaining the sustainability of its production, distribution and trade. Using UN databases, here we show that the international agro-food trade network (IFTN), with nodes and edges representing countries and import-export fluxes, respectively, has evolved into a highly heterogeneous, complex supply-chain network. Seven countries form the core of the IFTN, with high values of betweenness centrality and each trading with over 77% of all the countries in the world. Graph theoretical analysis and a dynamic food flux model show that the IFTN provides a vehicle suitable for the fast distribution of potential contaminants but unsuitable for tracing their origin. In particular, we show that high values of node betweenness and vulnerability correlate well with recorded large food poisoning outbreaks. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3365103 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-33651032012-06-14 Complexity of the International Agro-Food Trade Network and Its Impact on Food Safety Ercsey-Ravasz, Mária Toroczkai, Zoltán Lakner, Zoltán Baranyi, József PLoS One Research Article With the world’s population now in excess of 7 billion, it is vital to ensure the chemical and microbiological safety of our food, while maintaining the sustainability of its production, distribution and trade. Using UN databases, here we show that the international agro-food trade network (IFTN), with nodes and edges representing countries and import-export fluxes, respectively, has evolved into a highly heterogeneous, complex supply-chain network. Seven countries form the core of the IFTN, with high values of betweenness centrality and each trading with over 77% of all the countries in the world. Graph theoretical analysis and a dynamic food flux model show that the IFTN provides a vehicle suitable for the fast distribution of potential contaminants but unsuitable for tracing their origin. In particular, we show that high values of node betweenness and vulnerability correlate well with recorded large food poisoning outbreaks. Public Library of Science 2012-05-31 /pmc/articles/PMC3365103/ /pubmed/22701535 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0037810 Text en Ercsey-Ravasz et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Ercsey-Ravasz, Mária Toroczkai, Zoltán Lakner, Zoltán Baranyi, József Complexity of the International Agro-Food Trade Network and Its Impact on Food Safety |
title | Complexity of the International Agro-Food Trade Network and Its Impact on Food Safety |
title_full | Complexity of the International Agro-Food Trade Network and Its Impact on Food Safety |
title_fullStr | Complexity of the International Agro-Food Trade Network and Its Impact on Food Safety |
title_full_unstemmed | Complexity of the International Agro-Food Trade Network and Its Impact on Food Safety |
title_short | Complexity of the International Agro-Food Trade Network and Its Impact on Food Safety |
title_sort | complexity of the international agro-food trade network and its impact on food safety |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3365103/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22701535 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0037810 |
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