![]() ![]() With this bit of innovation, the researchers are confident they can offer much more accurate ‘best-before’ dates and prevent food from being discarded unnecessarily. Ktenioudaki’s team has developed a sensor system that monitors the environmental conditions for produce at each stage in the supply chain. As part of a general review of food-labelling rules, the European Commission is considering a proposal to abolish altogether the use of ‘best-before’ dates. In the European Union, legislation requires that most pre-packed foods display a date indicating a threshold in their safety (‘use by’) or quality (‘best-before’). Almost a third of all food produced is squandered or lost, according to the United Nations World Food Programme, even as hundreds of millions of people around the globe face hunger. Globalisation has produced a paradox in the food industry: while vastly expanding the range of products on store shelves, it has contributed to greater amounts of food going unconsumed by making it more abundant and lengthening the journey from farm to fork. ‘We need to come up with new solutions for everybody to tackle it.’ ‘We have a serious problem with food waste,’ said Ktenioudaki, one of the experts behind the Horizon-funded FreshProof. She was part of a recent European research project to reduce the enormous amount of fresh food that gets thrown away because it doesn’t get eaten before the date listed on the packaging. “The prevention strategy going forward is that in a crisis, you can focus on fast delivery to people in desperate situations without feeling that you can only get that speed by taking down common sense anti-fraud guardrails,” he said.Dr Anastasia Ktenioudaki has been tracking strawberries in Ireland with high-tech sensors. Gene Sperling, the White House American Rescue Plan coordinator, said any future crisis that requires government intervention doesn’t have to be a choice between helping people in need and stopping fraudsters. They’re busy, too, with crimes unrelated to pandemic relief funds. But there’s no guarantee they’ll catch everyone who jumped at the chance for an easy payday. The extra time will help federal prosecutors untangle pandemic fraud cases, which often involve identity theft and crooks overseas. Biden in August signed legislation to increase the statute of limitations from five to 10 years on crimes involving the two major programs managed by the SBA. Republicans and Democrats did, however, did find common ground last year on bills to year to give the federal government more time to catch fraudsters. ![]() Democrats have countered that all the financial muscle from Washington saved lives, businesses and jobs. Too much government money, Republicans argue, breeds fraud, waste and inflation. On politically divided Capitol Hill, lawmakers have not put the pandemic behind them and are engaged in a fierce debate over the success of the relief spending and who’s to blame for the theft. “24 hours? 48 hours? Would that really have upended the program?” Horowitz said. ![]() In less than a few days, a week at most, Horowitz said, SBA might have discovered thousands of ineligible applicants. And that the only other choice was to spend weeks and months trying to figure out who was entitled to it.” “One choice is, get the money out right away. “It’s a false narrative that has been set out, that there are only two choices,” Horowitz said. Those reviews, he said, could have been done quickly. Horowitz criticized the government’s failure early on to use the “Do Not Pay” Treasury Department database, designed to keep government money from going to debarred contractors, fugitives, felons or people convicted of tax fraud. GOVERNMENT HAVE DONE BETTER TO COMBAT FRAUD? ![]()
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