Rapid review of government issued documents relevant to mitigation of COVID-19 in the US food manufacturing and processing industry

  1. Ziqian Chen
  2. Ece Bulut
  3. Aljoša Trmčić
  4. Renata Ivanek

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Abstract

We surveyed publicly available records published by the United States (US) government between the start of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and September 30 th , 2021, to identify documents containing resources or guidelines about COVID-19 mitigation relevant to the US food manufacturing and processing industry (hereafter referred to as “the food processing industry”). Among 36 documents identified and reviewed (including 35 from government agencies and one from a relevant professional association), we extracted 19 categories of mitigation strategies covering the themes of employee biosafety, surveillance, vaccination, social distancing, and worker education. We concluded that the priority of COVID-19 mitigation in the food processing industry was to protect the health and safety of industry workers while maintaining food supply chain resilience to minimize disturbance in the food market and avoid food crisis. A collated list of the identified documents and their comprehensive review will (i) aid researchers and public health workers in interpreting the potential impacts of the recommended mitigations on the epidemiology of the disease among workers in the food processing industry and (ii) help the food processing industry sort out the most essential strategies to take in face of a pandemic.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.02.25.22271516: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Ethicsnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Content analysis: After the initial collecting and screening of documents, content analysis was conducted on all identified documents, and a codebook was developed in Microsoft Excel to record the mitigation strategies mentioned in each document.
    Microsoft Excel
    suggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Study limitation: In line with the search period in this review, identified documents were limited to the period before October 2021. Consistent with the practice for rapid reviews (35) we focused on a specific segment of the food industry, and we adapted the search methodology to enable a rapid review process. Specifically, we thoroughly searched the CDC, OSHA, and FDA websites for food manufacturing and processing industry relevant COVID-19 information because we presumed that these three institutions are the most prominent government authorities relied on for guidance during the pandemic in the USA. Since the search methodology was not intended to provide an exhaustive review of all documents about COVID-19 mitigation ever published on the internet, relevant documents published by other government agencies and the corresponding additional mitigation strategies might have been missed. To address this, we expanded the search process with snowballing and identified a few additional documents in an effort to reduce the potential bias associated with the search methodology.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.02.25.22271516v1 on medRxiv