Access to safe, nutritious, and affordable food is essential to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development—especially its objective to ‘end hunger, achieve food security. and improved nutrition.’ However, unsafe food has been linked to causing over 200 different types of diseases, with nearly 600 million people succumbing to illness after consuming unsafe food every year. The theme of this year’s World Food Safety Day—‘Food Safety: Science in Action’—highlights the vital role of scientific knowledge in ensuring safe food for all. Against this backdrop, this commentary explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can become a powerful tool to strengthen food safety systems globally and address the implementation challenges associated with such apparatus. Conventional food safety systems are struggling to keep up with sophisticated, globalised food systems and the emerging risks they present. While surveillance gaps continue to widen, AI-enabled technology is driving new methodologies in detecting, tracing, and preventing contamination.
AI for Safer Food: Promise and Challenges
