Conditions leading towards a more robust food safety system: The results of an agent-based social simulation

摘要

This paper presents an agent-based model of food safety management. The model proposed by Sara McPhee-Knowles involving consumers, regulators, and stores are extended to evaluate the phenomena of “the wisdom of crowd” towards conditions leading to the more dependable system in terms of maintaining quality of food above a specified threshold. Through an agent-based simulation, it is revealed that more vigilance in correction measures taken by the stores ensures a large fraction of consumers ending up having good quality food. Another interesting finding is the self-organizing behavior of the population. It is evidenced that an active society has a capability to self-organize even in the absence of any regulatory compulsion. The implications of these findings are enormous. System components taking a self-organized corrective action resist against system going towards a highly skewed distribution, thus, improving its stability.