A food-safety expert explains why more recalls aren't necessarily a bad thing — and how AI plays a role

Food safety expert Willette M. Crawford explains that AI is not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to recalls and outbreaks. In fact, she believes that AI is helping experts manage massive amounts of data and improve foodborne outbreak detection. Crawford, a food science consultant and cofounder of Katalyst Agricultural Solutions, says that AI can help workers sift through vast datasets, allowing them to spend less time assembling and retrieving information and more time interpreting it and doing necessary investigations.

She adds that the food supply is not getting riskier, but our ability to see the risk is improving due to AI.

However, Crawford acknowledges that there are challenges to AI adoption in food safety, such as high costs and non-uniform data. She emphasizes that the bottleneck was never the math, but always the data. To effectively utilize AI for food safety processes, companies must first digitize their information. Crawford notes that those who have digitized their data are better positioned to benefit from AI tools, whereas those with incomplete, inconsistent, or poorly-maintained records will not see the expected ROI.

She also highlights the barriers to AI adoption, including high costs and the time needed to configure and validate models. Lastly, Crawford points out that there is currently no comprehensive, food-specific regulatory framework for using AI in food safety.