€3m food safety research project ‘an opportunity’ for agri-food sector

A €3 MILLION food safety research project offers a tremendous opportunity for the all-Ireland agri-food sector to establish itself as a proponent of safe, nutritionally beneficial and ethical foods with a strong local branding and a hallmark of quality, said the North’s Minister for Employment and Learning, Danny Kennedy.

A consortium led by Queen’s University, Belfast, with 11 partners from six countries, was awarded the research funding against competing bids from across Europe.

Their project (Quality and Safety of Feeds and Food for Europe) will study ways to improve the safety of animal feeds and the entire European animal-based food chain.

Chris Elliott of Queen’s said: “We will work together to develop better ways to prevent food fraud, identify risks to the food chain, and develop new technology for use at ports, factories and in labs to detect contamination quickly and at low cost.”

The project was announced during a food safety and traceability conference at Queen’s, where the first ever analysis was revealed of all food recalls in the US, Britain and Ireland over the last decade — totalling 2,439, including the recall of 380 million eggs in the US last year after a salmonella outbreak.

Antony Potter of Queen’s said the 2008 pork recall in Ireland cost the Irish economy €125 million.

“Of the product recalls we identified, 68% were detected during routine or spot testing by regulatory bodies, and only 21% were detected by the company. Around one fifth were in the meat industry, 12% in processed foods and 11% in fruit and vegetables.

“Most recalls resulted from operational mistakes, such as incorrect labelling, the presence of an undeclared ingredient, or contamination during the production process. While biological causes, such as the detection of listeria, salmonella and E coli were also a factor, a significant number of food safety alerts were actually due to food fraud and corruption by suppliers further down the supply chain. This highlights the need for food producers to invest in ensuring the traceability of their products back through the supply chain.”