Rampant media reports on food poisoning linked to the consumption of frozen fish and chicken products also stoked Antwi\u2019s interest in the problem. Roughly 90,000 Ghanaians die each year from food poisoning, and around 14% of all hospital admissions are for foodborne illnesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHigh-class restaurants are registering food poisoning, wayside food vendors are registering food poisoning, households are registering food poisoning,\u201d observes Antwi. \u201cSo it\u2019s an issue; where do we eat?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is either we help to reduce the losses or we go to join our ancestors untimely.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n While undertaking his research study, Antwi observed operations at Tema Fishing Harbor and Asafo Market in Kumasi. He says what he saw there helps explain why food poisoning is so prevalent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSometimes I would just go park, walk around and look at how the business is conducted,\u201d recalls Antwi. \u201cClearly, the actors are not on top of the business. That is why their actions are leading to massive food losses and poisoning.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Antwi says he witnessed sellers taking food from the fridge, exposing it to the sun all day at the market and then returning it to the refrigerator in the evening to sell the next day. He asked one woman if she disposes of the food she hasn\u2019t sold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cShe said, \u2018No, we just smoke it when it goes bad,\u2019\u201d Antwi exclaims. \u201cSo they change the form. They smoke it, they grill it, and sometimes they fry it. And that makes the risk quite serious because you can\u2019t tell if the product is bad,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Even when it is noticeably off, consumers still purchase it, Antwi learned. That was the biggest surprise of his research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou see the product has gone bad, and the people will buy it because it\u2019s a reduced price,\u201d he says. \u201cThat was the surprising thing, because they see the quality is so, so bad. And the people are buying it because, in Ghana, eating chicken, we deem it a privilege. So it doesn\u2019t matter the state to most people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are all at risk<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Antwi felt compelled to determine the root causes of the problem and find a solution. For his doctoral dissertation, he studied the actors in the temperature-sensitive food industries in Ghana, specifically licensed cold-storage facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He surveyed almost 300 importers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers in four regions of the country. He looked at the relationships among three factors: human capital (workers), refrigerated transportation performance (maintaining proper temperatures during transport), and cold-storage facility performance (maintaining proper temperatures during storage). <\/p>\n\n\n\n What he found is that all three factors are critical. The importance of prioritizing workforce development in the fight against food loss cannot be overstated, he noted. But improving either transportation or storage processes is insufficient. Both must be improved to make a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo reduce food loss effectively,\u201d Antwi says, \u201cbusinesses should invest in firm-specific skilled personnel, maintain high-quality transport and storage infrastructure, and encourage cooperation among participants in the supply chain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He hopes to use this knowledge both to educate future generations as a university professor and to bring about practical changes within the frozen-food supply chain. Antwi believes the reason he won the PhD Dissertation Award is because his research addresses a real problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI had a lot of challenges with respect to my topic,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I foresaw that it was going to be used to solve a question. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a must that we pull resources together to help reduce the quantity of food loss. Because whether contaminated food is consumed or destroyed, it affects either humanity, the environment or both. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are all at risk,\u201d Antwi warns. \u201cIt is either we help to reduce the losses or we go to join our ancestors untimely.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cFish and chicken\u201d is a nickname that may follow David Antwi for the entirety of his career. But he is OK with that. He has a ready comeback for fellow Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology students and faculty who call him \u201cfish and chicken professor.\u201d \u201cBy the end of the day,\u201d he tells … <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":4171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[294],"tags":[295],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Home-pg_PhD-Dissertation-600x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Home-pg_PhD-Dissertation-600x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Barby Grant","author_link":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/author\/idbag\/"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Home-pg_PhD-Dissertation.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4170"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4170"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4348,"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4170\/revisions\/4348"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/research.wpcarey.asu.edu\/carisca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/David-Antwicroppedsmall.png\")