FOODSEG project consortium continues work
The FOODSEG project, completed in April 2014, identified food safety problems and risks and put forward ideas on how to tackle them.
It was funded through the EU 7th Framework Programme (FP7) from May 2011 and involved 35 partners including RTD Services Tirol (Austria), TEAGASC (Ireland), VTT (Finland), Nofima MAT (Norway), Eurofins CTC (Germany) and National Research Center (Egypt).
Cooperation was achieved through an online platform with best practice examples and expert working groups to coordinate research activities and support policy development at EU level.
Working group areas
Working groups looked at identifying gaps in research reviewing scientific fields, determination of research needs and made qualified propositions for new projects and development of qualified recommendations to stakeholders.
Topics included food crisis management, authenticity, environmental lifestyle and persistence of foodborne pathogens, using microbial interaction as preventive measure, safety of produce and rapid novel technologies, standardization and harmonization.
For food crisis management, the main gaps in research were early warning; rapid risk assessment; diagnostic capabilities of unknown threats; emergency response validation; real-time crisis communication and forensic awareness of methods applied to a food crisis.
For authenticity, main topics for the future were development of tools with certain items emphasised and development of appropriate reference materials for types of food fraud (contrary to conventional food safety control approaches, for which a wide range of CRM is available, nothing is for this purpose), said the working group.
Follow-up consortium
FOODSEG Network is the follow-up action of the EU-funded project and focuses on bringing experts who are working along the full food chain (agriculture - feed - food - consumers) together.
The fourth FOODSEG symposium will take place on 23-24 April in Rome, Italy.
During the project the consortium organised an exchange programme for researchers including visits within the project partners to work commonly on working group actions, followed by a competition.
Three young researchers were recognised and invited to the event in 2015 following the competition. More than 20 proposals were submitted, with winners from Lithuania, Romania and Serbia.
Gintare Zakariene, Lithuanian University of Health Sciences, Veterinary Academy, Anca Gheroghe, National Research & Development Institute for Animal Biology and Nutrition, Balotesti, Romania and Tamara Depcevic Hadnadev, Institute of Food Technology, University of Novi Sad, Serbia were awarded.
