Effectiveness of official food safety control in Barcelona city: Digital and traditional inspections

Analysing the effects of using a digital environment in official food safety control and understanding its benefits is crucial for competent authorities. The aim of this paper was to assess the effectiveness of official control carried out by the Barcelona Public Health Agency between 2015 and 2022 in Barcelona city (Spain) at retail outlets following the transition from a traditional to a digital inspection. Effectiveness is defined as the ability to detect non-compliance during inspections. This study assessed 2,188 inspection reports of risk-based planned inspections from 2015 to 2019 (traditional inspection) and 2022 (digital inspection) to compare the detection of non-compliances. The results show a significant increase in the detection of non-compliance when using the digital inspection. Compared to all inspection areas studied, the highest prevalence difference in the detection of non-compliance using a digital environment was found for the areas of food processing and handling procedures (34.0%) and own controls (16.7%). On the other hand, the areas of food labelling and general cleanliness of premises and equipment showed the lowest difference, 11.1% and 7.9%, respectively. The present case study shows that the use of a digital environment during inspections positively supports the control officers in structuring the compliance judgement and being more sensible to detect non-compliance. This fact results in a greater effectiveness of food control. •This research investigated the impact of using digital technologies on the effectiveness of food control.•The mean number of non-compliant inspection areas significantly increased with digital inspection.•The inspection area with the highest prevalence difference was food processing and handling procedures (34.0%).•The use of a digital environment increased the effectiveness of official control in Barcelona city.