The first SPICED newsletter is available
In general, securing the food chains from primary production to consumer-ready food against major contaminations is directly related to the safety of food products. One must consider that many alerts from European Countries via the Rapid Alert System of Food and Feed (RASFF) over the past years included spices and herbs. Additionally, spices and herbs are contained in almost every processed food, including ready-to-eat products, thus consumers can be directly exposed to contaminated spices and herbs. Those and further facts are indicating the need of monitoring this commodity and therefore, the SPICED objectives are: - to characterize the heterogeneous matrices of spices and herbs and their respective production and supply chains in context with relevant biological and chemical hazards that can lead to major deliberate, accidental or natural contaminations in the food supply chain, - to improve the knowledge on biological hazard properties as well as on-site and high throughput diagnostic methods for appropriate detection, - to reduce (industrial) chemical adulterations as well as to ensure authenticity of spices and herbs by evaluation and improvement of non-targeted fingerprinting methods, and - to improve alerting, reporting and decontamination systems as well as techniques to ensure prevention and response on high quality level. The consortium evaluates the most important spices and herbs that could be the source for natural, accidental or deliberate contaminations. The SPICED project will lead to a better and more comprehensive view on the heterogeneous matrix of spices and herbs. With its comprehensive approach it will be possible to improve food safety and food security aspects in the spices and herbs food chain and to reduce high economic impact and human casualties. The EU level of expertise in this field will be significantly increased. For the newsletter and further information please look at www.spiced.eu
Länder
Austria, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Netherlands