Improved food safety and traceability through data sharing
Consumers around the world are increasingly focused on food quality and authenticity. High-quality and reliable data on the food chain are crucial for expanding the use of food safety and traceability technologies to protect the interests of consumers and producers alike. They allow for advanced research on food metrology and metrological tools that ensure reliable and accurate measurement. Agrifood, one of the EU’s largest and most important economic sectors, plays a vital role in ensuring food security and providing jobs and investment in rural areas. METROFOOD-RI is a new EU-wide research infrastructure (RI) aiming to provide high-quality services to the agrifood sector, including food safety, quality, traceability and authenticity, and sustainability of agrifood systems. The EU-funded METROFOOD-PP project developed the organisational, operational and strategic framework for METROFOOD-RI, making available and sharing data, information and metrological tools to enhance scientific excellence throughout the food chain.
Best of both worlds
METROFOOD-PP focused on structuring the legal entity that will manage the future infrastructure, i.e. the European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). “Project partners developed the technical and financial framework necessary for creating a service-oriented organisation, establishing its operational standards and strategically defining its long-term activities,” says project coordinator Claudia Zoani. The RI comprises both a physical research infrastructure (P-RI) and an electronic research infrastructure (e-RI). The P-RI coordinates and integrates existing facilities like plants, laboratories, farms and fisheries for crop production and animal breeding, pilot plants for food production and kitchen labs for replicating consumer habits and food preparation and consumption. Data on food composition, nutritional content, levels of contaminants and markers in food are shared, integrated and applied through the platform provided via the project’s e-RI. In this way, the e-RI supports the P-RI’s experimental activities: it provides information like available metrological tools, threshold values (the minimum energy required to cause a reaction) and food data.
Improved data access means better food
According to Zoani, services are already being provided to external users. “They include optimising bakery processes for reducing acrylamide, improving food quality, and providing researchers with remote access to a facility for the analysis of nanoparticles in food,” she states. A new virtual access app was implemented that supports risk assessment, while the RM-App helped researchers and lab technicians find worldwide-available reference materials of interest for analysis. The RM-App is openly available and free of charge upon registration on the website. Project partners have published their strategic research & innovation agenda for the next 5-year period, a milestone for the mission of METROFOOD-RI. The agenda highlights research priorities in metrological tools, circular food systems, food data handling and producer-consumer interaction. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, the wide range of expertise, tools and capacities of the infrastructure’s consortium members will be used to address key issues related to the food chain. “Particular attention is paid to social engagement and co-creation approaches, even with the implementation of Living Labs as a tool for open innovation and actual engagement of the agrifood system stakeholders”, concludes Zoani.
Keywords
METROFOOD-PP, infrastructure, food safety, quality, traceability, authenticity
