Periodic Reporting for period 2 - DiTECT (DIgital TEChnologies as an enabler for a conTinuous transformation of food safety system)
Reporting period: 2022-05-01 to 2024-04-30
The food and agriculture sector faces many challenges and seemingly conflicting requirements. Despite rising costs and limited water and soil resources, food businesses must provide nutritious, safe, and affordable food to consumers with changing lifestyles and consumption patterns. They work with regulatory authorities to ensure food availability, avoidance of adulteration and contamination, and safety. These global issues concern the EU and China.
The DiTECT project developed the foundational technology for an advanced food safety monitoring system. A sophisticated, live tool manages the entire food distribution network in this system. The system can detect, assess, and reduce biological, chemical, and environmental pollutants in corn, poultry, cattle (including milk), and fish supply chains. DiTECT sought to improve EU-China agri-food chain cooperation between researchers, industries, and food authorities. DiTECT used cutting-edge computer and food science software, sensors, and data management. This allowed them to quantify hazards and contaminants, develop tools to identify unethical practices and fraud, and create a comprehensive scientific database with data from every stage of the farm-to-fork process in the pilot projects.
To efficiently identify, evaluate, and reduce biological, chemical, and environmental food hazards, the DiTECT project seeks measurable proof. The project uses advanced software and fast, non-invasive sensors. Goals of the DiTECT project: (i) To study the needs, preferences, market demand, and reception of different food industry user groups; (ii) to create product-specific food safety models for international food chains that involve multiple food business operators in the European Union (EU) and China; (iii) to facilitate collaboration between food value-chain actors and regulatory authorities; and (iv) to create a technology (v) A new framework will integrate food industry data. The DiTECT project aims to produce efficient, effective, and appealing conceptual and technical results. These findings will boost food system trust by reducing food hazards, resulting in sustainable market changes for commercial food actors. To demonstrate and verify the DiTECT approach's efficacy using specific food safety scenarios; and to expand, distribute, and communicate the project's tools and findings to improve the EU and China's food systems. Establishing a technologically advanced food safety monitoring platform will achieve the goals. The DiTECT project covers maize, poultry, cattle (including milk), and fish production use-cases. The iFSMS platform was tested and validated in these scenarios. The project successfully brought together EU and Chinese researchers, industries, and food authorities within the agri-food chain.
The DiTECT project developed the foundational technology for an advanced food safety monitoring system. A sophisticated, live tool manages the entire food distribution network in this system. The system can detect, assess, and reduce biological, chemical, and environmental pollutants in corn, poultry, cattle (including milk), and fish supply chains. DiTECT sought to improve EU-China agri-food chain cooperation between researchers, industries, and food authorities. DiTECT used cutting-edge computer and food science software, sensors, and data management. This allowed them to quantify hazards and contaminants, develop tools to identify unethical practices and fraud, and create a comprehensive scientific database with data from every stage of the farm-to-fork process in the pilot projects.
To efficiently identify, evaluate, and reduce biological, chemical, and environmental food hazards, the DiTECT project seeks measurable proof. The project uses advanced software and fast, non-invasive sensors. Goals of the DiTECT project: (i) To study the needs, preferences, market demand, and reception of different food industry user groups; (ii) to create product-specific food safety models for international food chains that involve multiple food business operators in the European Union (EU) and China; (iii) to facilitate collaboration between food value-chain actors and regulatory authorities; and (iv) to create a technology (v) A new framework will integrate food industry data. The DiTECT project aims to produce efficient, effective, and appealing conceptual and technical results. These findings will boost food system trust by reducing food hazards, resulting in sustainable market changes for commercial food actors. To demonstrate and verify the DiTECT approach's efficacy using specific food safety scenarios; and to expand, distribute, and communicate the project's tools and findings to improve the EU and China's food systems. Establishing a technologically advanced food safety monitoring platform will achieve the goals. The DiTECT project covers maize, poultry, cattle (including milk), and fish production use-cases. The iFSMS platform was tested and validated in these scenarios. The project successfully brought together EU and Chinese researchers, industries, and food authorities within the agri-food chain.
Both regions' partners had to work together on the next-generation monitoring platform. Online sensors detect environmental contaminants, hazards, and other factors. Hazards, contaminants, malpractices, and dishonesty have been monitored from farm to fork using the right sensors. More than 10 instruments analyzed 20,000 samples, they have software-processed spectroscopic, genomic, and binary data like microbe count and temperature. Maintaining EU and Chinese data was mostly about building the DiTECT platform's technical base and semantic data management. Expanding the Food Safety-specific DiTECT ontology to include all project methods and sensors is underway. Also being made are federated architecture design requirements.Hazards environmental contaminants, malpractices, and adulterations were assessed and the smart food safety system tested.
The DiTECT integrated food safety strategy uses reliable risk assessment models. The risk analysis framework uses these models to identify, assess, and mitigate risks. China and EU food supply chains' main food safety issues related to certain food-risk combinations were compared using risk assessment models. For example, (a) examined how combining found and approved detection and monitoring technologies from different WPs will reduce safety risks. b) Found the best ways to combine cutting-edge technology and management techniques at different food supply chain levels to maximize efficiency and public health. c) Used RA models to create the DiTECT Risk Framework, a risk management system and early warning and decision-making tool. Multiple food hazards were modeled for risk assessment. Detailed scenario analysis was done using baseline risk assessment models. Food safety decision-makers liked alternative scenario testing. Comparing intervention effects on illness risk helps them prioritize strategies. This data can aid food safety regulations and business contamination prevention.
All partners worked to (a) raise awareness of biological, chemical, and environmental hazards and food safety; (b) improve cooperation with China by planning activities alongside this project; and (c) make it easier to share, teach, and use project results, which is crucial for the project's long-term success. EU-China food safety cooperation improved through training and knowledge sharing. DiTECT held webinars, conferences, workshops, and training in both regions to ensure project success. These activities improve food safety by helping scientists understand biological, chemical, and environmental risks, which is crucial to project success. These efforts make DiTECT more useful, effective, and influential by targeting over 5,000 food industry professionals and organizations.
DiTECT has improved EU-China relations, making it easier for people to collaborate, get involved, and share risk management knowledge.
The DiTECT integrated food safety strategy uses reliable risk assessment models. The risk analysis framework uses these models to identify, assess, and mitigate risks. China and EU food supply chains' main food safety issues related to certain food-risk combinations were compared using risk assessment models. For example, (a) examined how combining found and approved detection and monitoring technologies from different WPs will reduce safety risks. b) Found the best ways to combine cutting-edge technology and management techniques at different food supply chain levels to maximize efficiency and public health. c) Used RA models to create the DiTECT Risk Framework, a risk management system and early warning and decision-making tool. Multiple food hazards were modeled for risk assessment. Detailed scenario analysis was done using baseline risk assessment models. Food safety decision-makers liked alternative scenario testing. Comparing intervention effects on illness risk helps them prioritize strategies. This data can aid food safety regulations and business contamination prevention.
All partners worked to (a) raise awareness of biological, chemical, and environmental hazards and food safety; (b) improve cooperation with China by planning activities alongside this project; and (c) make it easier to share, teach, and use project results, which is crucial for the project's long-term success. EU-China food safety cooperation improved through training and knowledge sharing. DiTECT held webinars, conferences, workshops, and training in both regions to ensure project success. These activities improve food safety by helping scientists understand biological, chemical, and environmental risks, which is crucial to project success. These efforts make DiTECT more useful, effective, and influential by targeting over 5,000 food industry professionals and organizations.
DiTECT has improved EU-China relations, making it easier for people to collaborate, get involved, and share risk management knowledge.
The following findings indicate the progress beyond the state of the art: (a) The massive amount of high-throughput data from sensors like FTIR, NIR, RAMAN, environmental sensors, ToC etc. provides a holistic view of the decaying process of the tested project products across the food chain. (b) The monitoring system can be applied to other food types (e.g. vegetables, salads, dairy products) (c)The DiTECT consortium encourages multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches, fostering collaboration among scientists from various fields (d)The food industry has been given ideas for a new generation of quality and safety monitoring tools that are fast, efficient, and non-invasive and can be implemented on-site using portable devices (process analytical technology. The developed system's online connectivity offers unprecedented accuracy compared to conventional inspection methods. The approach developed in this project can be applied to other chilled perishable food products and will serve as a paradigm for good intra- and extra-processing in Process Analytical Technologies (e) More accurate and automated product monitoring will boost consumer confidence in meat/fish and improve these industries' competitiveness (f) Enhancing European industry completeness in sensor technologies and control for economically sustainable industrial processes. Due to recent microbiological outbreaks, consumers are demanding higher food quality and safety and thus DiTECT is contributing to (a) Supporting EU Regulation No 2073/2005 by replacing time-consuming microbiological analyses (b)Restoring consumer trust in the European industry by introducing a new quality and safety monitoring system that can be used throughout the production chain; Reducing food waste, indirectly affecting food security