General Strike Disrupts Spain but Our Conference Poster Makes It Through

If you have international collaborators, colleagues, and friends, you may hear of world news events before any official news reports.

This happened to me this morning, when I received a message from Professor Tina Wakolbinger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business. She was to present, with her doctoral student, a poster based on the paper that we have been working on, along with another co-author, Dr. Fuminori Toyasaki of York University in Canada. Both Tina and Fuminori had been my doctoral students at the Isenberg School of Management and are doing terrific research in supply chains and sustainability as well as in the financial funding of humanitarian organizations.

The title of our paper that was to be presented in poster format was, "The Influence of Technical, Market and Legislative Factors on E-Waste Flows" and the venue was the International Closed-Loop Conference in Zaragoza, Spain. A clip from the poster is featured above.

The message from Tina said that she had made it to Zaragoza, Spain and was at the International Closed-Loop Conference. The agenda for the conference can be downloaded here.

There was a general strike yesterday in Spain, so the trains did not run and they drove over a thousand miles by car (that is academic dedication). According to Mapquest, this trip is estimated at 19 hours!

Then Zaragoza was blocked because of people walking and striking, so they drove around for 2 hours.

They finally made it to the hotel around 10 PM.

Then the Internet did not work ....

Several of the conferees could not come because of cancelled flights (including Dr. Toyasaki). Other speakers were planning on Skyping in because they could not come as well.

Later, I read online about the general strike that had crippled Spain and that had brought transportation to a standstill. At least 58 had been arrested and there have also been injuries. The strike is against austerity measures of the government.

But our conference poster made it through, thanks to Professor Tina Wakolbinger and Thomas Nowak.

Now, they have to make it safely back to Vienna!

Food Safety in Global Supply Chains

What is more important than the air we breathe and the food that we eat?!

The news coming from the European continent is shocking with 18 deaths reported, and close to 2,000 suffering from a rare E. Coli bacteria that officials believe was in the food supply, most likely in raw vegetables (cukes, tomatoes, and lettuce have been prime suspects, although the specific strain has not been found in the vegetables), with the majority of the illnesses being traced to northern Germany, specifically, Hamburg.

At this time of the year, when spring is in the northern hemisphere and the consumption of produce is up, to have hundreds hospitalized with severe kidney malfunctions is horrifying.

I travel a lot and enjoy the local, fresh cuisine whenever possible and who would expect such food-borne illnesses in such a highly developed country as Germany? A Swede has died after traveling to Germany and there are supposedly several in the US, also who traveled to Germany, now ill. We actually heard about this major health calamity from the owner of one of our local farms who has a wonderful soft ice cream stand, since she has relatives in that part of Germany, before the news even reached the major western media.

Food safety is essential as is food traceability. Dr. Mary Helander who spoke on a research panel on food safety recently at the INFORMS conference at UMass gave a brilliant talk on the topic in our Speaker Series and you can access her presentation here, which I wrote about on this blog. Ironically, shortly after her talk, there was an outbreak of E. Coli poisoning in hamburgers in the US.

A few years ago, I was on the doctoral dissertation of a student, Mr. Diogo M. Souza Monteiro, whose dissertation was entitled, Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of the Economics of Traceability Adoption in Food Supply Chains. He is now a professor in England, and visited us last Fall. He had also been a student in one of my Management Science classes in which we used my Network Economics book and had done a very nice project on vertical integration in food supply chains. He also cited several of our papers on supply chains and risk management in his dissertation. His dissertation advisor, Professor Julie Caswell, served on a major FDA panel on food safety and risk.

What is happening in Europe now regarding the food supply is turning into a major international incident since countries are refusing produce from certain countries.

I was invited to give keynotes at two different conferences in China that took place last week. Reading about food safety issues there as well as pollution gave me serious pause (you probably have seen the articles on watermelons exploding there due to injected chemicals, the milk being adulterated, and I stop here) and I was advised not to travel there. One of my keynotes in Shenzhen was delivered via videotape. Now, interestingly, Chinese scientists, from Shenzhen, are helping German scientists, to decipher the genetic code of the rare E. Coli bacteria! According to The New York Times, this Chinese laboratory said that the contagion had been caused by a “new strain of bacteria that is highly infectious and toxic.”

Food safety in global supply chains will require not only technology but also the cooperation among all the stakeholders from producers and distributors to consumers as well as regulators. In the meantime, people are very afraid and will continue to be until the source(s) of this severe outbreak is found.

Thank You, South Africa, for a Great World Cup

Wherever you may have been this weekend, it was hard not to notice the excitement surrounding the 2010 World Cup final in South Africa.

I was in cosmopolitan, gorgeous NYC this past weekend, which was filled not only with locals who weren't at the Hamptons, but also with many tourists from around the world.

Yesterday, the scores during the Spain vs. The Netherlands final match were relayed from taxi driver to taxi driver (these we saw parked) and from tourist to tourist so one could always catch the score even while walking.

As the German octopus named Paul "predicted," Spain beat The Netherlands and the final score was 1-0. Neither of these teams had ever advanced to the finals so it was a great achievement for both. The day before Germany beat Uruguay to receive third place in this 32 team World Cup.

Thank you, South Africa, for a month of great sports in the form of the game of soccer that brought fans around the globe to focus on the exciting games in your country. It was the first time that the World Cup was hosted on the continent of Africa and South Africa should be congratulated for the success of this month-long sports event!

Spain Beats Germany so It's Spain vs. The Netherlands in the 2010 World Cup Final

Germany just lost to Spain with a brilliant goal header giving Spain a win with a score of 1-0.

The final game will take place this Sunday in South Africa with The Netherlands playing Spain for the World Cup championship. This will be Spain's first World Cup final appearance.

I studied both Spanish and German so did not favor either team.

Amazing, though, to have 2 European soccer teams be the finalists of this great World Cup tournament in South Africa.