In accordance to EU-DG Health and Consumer Protection, for consumers safety is the most important ingredient of their food. The Commission's guiding principle, primarily set out in the White Paper on Food Safety, is to apply an integrated approach from farm to table covering all sectors of the food chain, including feed production, primary production, food processing, storage, transport and retail sale.
It is important to remark that two of the Strategic Priorities of this White Paper are:
To consistently implement a farm to table approach in food legislation
To establish the principle that feed and food operators have primary responsibility for food safety.
Antibiotics are used in animals, not only for treatment, but also to prevent animals from developing diseases and, in some countries to promote their growth. For instance, 73% and 46% of all the antibiotics commercialized in the US and China, respectively, are used in the veterinary sector. The overuse and misuse of antibiotics in the primary sector can promote antibiotic resistant bacteria. This issue is considered by the World Health Organization as one of the three greatest threats to human health for the next decades. Therefore, control of antibiotic residues in food is a major concern for three main reasons, food safety (i.e. allergies), public health by increasing of antibiotics resistances and technological problems in manufacturing fermented food (i.e. cheese and yogurt production).
Unfortunately, there is a lack of suitable analytical systems for the primary sector (farms) and processors (slaughterhouses, dairies) to screen more than 50 authorized antibiotics substances in milk or meat. Although there are some screening tests available, these methods are designed for analysts. Farmers and food processors are focused on milk and dairy products production, but they are not experts in analytical techniques neither they wish to divert their activity from production. Current methods require one member of the staff to take care of the assay for few hours and to decide if milk is contaminated based on his/her trained but subjective reading of the test.
The objective of this project is to develop an easy-to-use and low cost solution to bring the food safety controls to all operators in the food chain.
The system will allow:
Farmers to do self-controls before supplying the milk to diaries or the livestock to slaughterhouses.
Slaughterhouses to do on-site controls of meat carcasses.
Dairies to screen antibiotics before processing the milk.
