Busquin visits EU food safety projects
The EU Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin visited researchers working on food safety projects at Gembloux University's Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and the Agricultural Research Centre of Gembloux, Belgium on 11 October He paid particular attention to the European STRATFEED, MEDEO and SPELT initiatives. The aim of the STRATFEED project is to define new strategies for the detection of mammalian tissues in animal feed. Following the BSE or 'mad cow' crisis, the European Union has banned the use of animal tissue and processed animal proteins in feed for farmed animals destined for human consumption. The STRATFEED project was launched in January 2001 as part of the Growth Programme's 'measurement and testing' generic activity under the Fifth Framework Programme (FP5). The project, coordinated by the Gembloux Centre for Agricultural Research, includes the creation of a sample bank of animal-derived ingredients and feed samples, improvements to the efficiency of current testing methods and the development of alternative testing techniques. The project lasts for 42 months. The SPELT project is dedicated to the cereal 'spelt,' a little-used crop indigenous to Europe with a protein yield up to 18 per cent higher than traditional cereal crops. The research project into improving the crop included studies to establish its genetic make-up, chemical content and physical attributes. Research was carried out into its suitability for animal feed, and new product lines for the pasta, beer and breakfast cereal markets were developed. The project found that the high protein yield and nitrogen efficiency of spelt gives it the potential to become a serious competitor to wheat in the animal feed market. It is also better digested by grazing animals and can grow in cold, wet, poor quality soil, allowing farmers to grow the feed themselves at low cost. The SPELT project is one of a series of research initiatives launched under the EU's Fourth RTD Framework programme (1994-1998) to investigate alternative feed crops. The project findings offer interesting possibilities for the diversification of agricultural production and the development of alternatives to meat and bone meal in animal feed in line with a recent Commission Communication. The use of meat and bone meal to feed farm animals destined for human consumption was banned following the BSE crisis. The MEDEO project aims to find ways of detecting the fraudulent dilution of olive oil with hazelnut oil. Olive oil constitutes the basic income sources for around 2 million families in less-favoured, southern regions of the EU. The adulteration of olive oils with hazelnut oil, which poses considerable detection problems, is a threat to both the worldwide image of European olive oil and those whose livelihoods depend on it. The MEDEO project has been undertaken to provide the EU Agriculture Directorate, OLAF and customs authorities with reliable detection methods which can be adopted into legislation and used to prevent this kind of fraud. There are currently no official methods for the detection of hazelnut oils in olive oil samples. The MEDEO project aims to design protocols, validate detection methods to internationally-agreed methodologies and train analysts in the new techniques.