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A Decade of EU Food Chain Integrity Research Throughout the world, consumers expect safe food. However food safety issues continually arise, many of which have an international dimension, for example the recent E.Coli outbreak in Germany, the 2010 listeriosis outbreak in Austria/Germany/Czech Republic, and the 2009 Salmonella outbreak in Ireland/England/Denmark. Increasingly food chains are becoming global in their scope and food chain integrity, which not only includes safety concerns but also origin fraud and quality, has become a central concern to the food industry and regulatory agencies everywhere. After the BSE scare in England in the late 90s, the EU came under pressure to fund research into complete traceability systems along the food and feed chain with the objective of increasing consumer confidence. This called for ways to ensure that products can be linked to their source, while also protecting products of declared origin; and ways to trace genetically modified organisms, and other products or contaminants, based on recent biotechnology developments, from raw material origin to purchased food product. As a result the European Union, through the Sixth EC Framework Programme (2002-2006), has funded a significant amount of cooperative research in food chain integrity and traceability under Priority Area 5 of the programme. Traceability was one of eight distinct areas of Priority 5, resulting in over 14 different research projects, and a total research budget of over €140 million. The projects involved up to 400 different participating institutes across 30 countries and for EU trade reasons had significant international partnerships from around the world, including China, South America, Australia/New Zealand, Russia and South Africa. In addition, there was a high industrial and SME participation. With many of the projects completed or nearing completion, much of this work is now coming to fruition. The background for this conference is a joint effort by the coordinators of the research projects in the area of food chain integrity to present the main outcomes of the projects and to discuss future developments. The European Commission facilitated this initiative through several meetings in Brussels with the project coordinators between 2009 and 2011 and through direct support to the conference. The overall objective of the research was to increase consumer confidence in the food supply chain by strengthening technologies needed to ensure complete traceability, transparency and safety along the entire food and animal feed chains. The technologies investigated link products to their source, or declared origin, and facilitate detection of trace contamination or substances present, such as bacteria, toxins, or genetically modified organisms, from the raw material origin to the consumed food product. A wide number of food sectors were covered, from beef, fish, water, olive oil, to different food formats; fresh, chilled, or farm livestock. Accordingly, a wide range of technologies have been investigated from sophisticated electronic sensors, navigation systems, and software to an extensive range of genomic molecular diagnostics and complex mathematical models. New products such as decision support tools, time-temperature indicators, tracking devices; pathogen detection methods etc. have been developed. These are now at various stages of implementation, with the active participation of industry and SMEs. Scale of production is an important consideration in food chain integrity as in many cases the technological solutions for large scale processes may not be transferable to small or medium scale production. The research actions funded by the European Union have generated a huge amount of data, results, and actual technologies and this is an opportunity to summarize the true scale of the advances that have been made, and the excellent possibilities for technology transfer. |
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