Dr Seamus O'Reilly of Cork University Business School at University College Cork (UCC) outlines vulnerabilities in the food chain and outlines how the industry can protect itself.

In the aftermath of high profile issues around food contamination and authenticity, the industry as a whole is taking steps to address vulnerabilities that it currently faces and ones that may be a potential issue in the future. One of the experts in this area is Dr Seamus O’Reilly of Cork University Business School, UCC. Seamus has always had a particular interest in the food industry and, over a 25-year academic career, has worked closely with industry in the area of supply chain management. Since 2002 he has designed and delivered lean supply chain management programmes from Certificate to Postgraduate level for practitioners in multi-national and Irish owned companies spanning industries such as Food and Drink, Pharmaceuticals, Medtec, Electronics and Services. Currently Seamus is a Senior Lecturer in Cork University Business School, UCC, where he is Academic Director of Supply Chain Management programmes. He is also Academic Director of the part-time Diploma in Food Manufacturing Management offered by the Food Industry Training Unit in UCC.

Seamus and his colleagues have been looking at the issue of food fraud and defense, specifically from a supply chain management perspective. As he points out, while there has been quite a lot of focus on the development of analytical techniques to assess food authenticity, as well as the underlying conditions giving rise to food fraud and threat, other key areas have been somewhat overlooked. “There has been less attention on the management frameworks required,” Seamus explains, “For example, how does risk assessment, allocation of resources, and development and deployment of countermeasures fit with established enterprise risk management and supply chain governance mechanisms?”

Two of the key potential vulnerability issues currently facing the food industry globally are food fraud and terrorism and, while both arise from intentional acts, the motivations and executions are different. “ Acts motivated to cause harm, including terrorism and sabotage from disgruntled employees, are often committed within the firm,” Seamus explains. This in turn means that various threats are handled differently. On-site measures may involve a Threat Assessment and Critical Control Points (TACCP) plan. “They cover issues such as manufacturing plant and transportation security, IT security and employee background checks.” For food fraud, the focus tends to be upstream in the supply chain. A Vulnerability Assessment and Critical Control Points (VACCP) plan can be used in this instance. “It widens the scope by seeking to identify the vulnerable points in a supply chain.” This has led to significant advances in analytical techniques - such as liquid chromatography, infrared spectroscopy, and hyphenated mass spectroscopy - to assess the authenticity of food products.

When it comes to food fraud, the island of Ireland is somewhat ahead of the curve in addressing these issues. “The island is considered to be among those pioneering a response to food fraud. However, we can always learn from others,” Seamus says. One example he highlights is the Netherlands, which has had a food crime unit  since the early 2000s. “They have built a strong interdisciplinary team, including not just food scientists and those with traditional policing skills but also accountants, logisticians, journalists, lawyers, forensic auditors and data analysts,” he explains. An organisation in Denmark has similar legal powers to Ireland’s Criminal Asset Bureau (CAB) which allows the confiscation of, as Seamus puts it, “ill-gotten gains” and imposition of financial penalties. The United States of America has been paying attention to food defense for a number of years too. In 2004 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security established the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, headquartered at the University of Minnesota and there is a Food Fraud Initiative in the University of Michigan. “Here on the island of Ireland, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland has established a Food Fraud Task Force while in the UK the Food Standards Agency set up a National Food Crime Unit,” Seamus says. “The Institute of Global Food Security, Queen’s University Belfast has contributed to the analytical techniques and instruments to detect food fraud.”

It is key that food bodies, and indeed countries, work together to combat threats. The EU Fraud Network facilitates the sharing of information among agencies and there is also OPSON, a joint INTERPOL-Europol organisation. Established in 2011, OPSON organises annual operations involving joint efforts of police, customs, national food regulatory bodies, and partners from the private sector. One OPSON investigation into fraudulent practice in seafood found illicit practices including species substitution and fraudulently selling tuna intended for canning as fresh. “The tuna intended for canning was illegally treated with chemical substances to give the misleading impression of its freshness,” Seamus explains, adding. “A conservative estimate of the cost of this fraud to the European industry was put at €200m.”

So what can the industry do to help combat this threat? Seamus believes that the level of collaboration should increase and that the industry as a whole needs to be looking for the next vulnerable area. In short, it’s like detective work; collecting crumbs of information currently available to work out where to focus on next. “We need to look more closely at the conditions that give rise to fraud to prioritise products to test, and priorities will shift over time as ‘conditions’ change. That’s why horizon scanning has a key role to play,” Seamus says. “This includes data on weather conditions, price hikes, shifts in supply and demand, etc.” The threat to the industry is always changing and those within it need to be continually adapting. Collaboration, research advancements and constant horizon scanning may combine to form the best means to fight against food fraud and other vulnerabilities across the industry and beyond.

This article is based on a safefood-funded research project.  The final research project is available at www.safefood.eu/Publications/Research-reports.

In honour of its 20th anniversary, in 2019, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) is hosting a two-day international food science conference.

"The Science of Food Safety – What’s Our Future?” takes place in Dublin’s Convention Centre on 21st and 22nd August and will focus on microbiological safety and chemical safety. Attendees will hear from international and national keynote speakers, speakers chosen from abstracts and student posters, and enjoy the social event, with a chance to network with others in the industry. For more information go to www.foodsafety2019.com

safefood has launched the 2019 series of workshops for small and medium-sized food businesses in association with Teagasc, entitled ‘Food Safety: Helping You To Get It Right’. These workshops will provide practical advice and cover areas such as:

• Food Allergens In A Nutshell
• Food Labelling: What You Need To Know
• The Role of Packaging In Food Safety
• Food Hygiene Essentials: A Clean Regime
• Controlling Food-Poisoning Bacteria

Workshops are free, but places are limited, and allocated on a first come, first served basis. To register to attend, please visit www.safefood.eu/events

22nd May 2019 - Cork                 

23rd May 2019 - Killarney            

4th September 2019 - Dublin North       

5th September 2019 - Belfast        

17th September 2019 - Sligo                 

18th September 2019 - Ballinasloe   

For more information please email: knevents@safefood.eu

In partnership with the Environmental Health Service in Northern Ireland, the safefood Knowledge Network organised training workshops across the region. The aim was to help food businesses operators understand the various factors that can influence the shelf life of the food products they produce and how to validate a food product’s shelf life. Four one-day workshops were held in Antrim (11th March), Newtownabbey (12th March), Cookstown (13th March) and Newcastle (14th March).

The safefood Food Safety Skills Fund Programme enables safefood Knowledge Network members to enhance their skills, broaden their expertise and create linkages between those involved in food safety on the island of Ireland. Members can visit other laboratories, attend conferences, centres of excellence and other training events that are food safety related.

Get Involved

This call for applications is for members of the safefood Knowledge Network only (you can sign up for free at www.safefoodkn.eu).

safefood offers a limited number of funded bursaries to a maximum of €1,200 or sterling equivalent (subject to vouched costs). There is no closing date for this call for applications. Selection of successful applications shall be on a first-come first-served basis or until such time as the Programme fund is used. All travel/visits need to be completed by the end of December 2019.

Application forms are available on the safefood Knowledge Network website, or from the Food Safety Skills Fund Programme Coordinator at safefood, tel: +353 21 230 41.

The safefood Knowledge Network has launched the Food Safety Development Award. It is to recognise food safety research carried out on the island of Ireland that has been successfully implemented along the food production chain (from farm to fork) and that has clearly had a positive impact on food safety. The competition opened on Friday 10th May 2019 with a final for receipt of entries of Friday 7th June 2019. For the entry form and competition guidelines please see here

Congratulations to the winner of our last competition, Dr. Leonie Wallace, Public Analyst’s Library, Galway.

The answer to the previous crossword was FESTIVE.

safefood is delighted to offer one lucky crossword winner a luxury hamper of gourmet food from Arcadia Delicatessen in Belfast.

Simply find the hidden word in the crossword, made up from the letters highlighted, and send the answer to knowledgenetwork@safefood.eu before 1st July 2019. This competition is open to Knowledge Network Members on the island of Ireland only.

ACROSS

7 Herb-flavoured wine-based drink (8)

8 Plant used in medicine or cookery (4)

9 Pannier, punnet, etc (6)

10 Grilled Italian sandwiches (6)

11 Internal organ of various animals cooked as meat (5)

12 Meat of the deer (7)

15 Temperature scale option on ovens (7)

17 Fruits of the blackthorn used to flavour and colour spirits like gin (5)

19 Kitchen equipment used to weigh or balance items (6)

21 Epithet for red Bordeaux wine (6)

22 Paste made of finely minced 11, for one (4)

23 Flavoured or made with hazelnuts (8)

DOWN

1 Glutinous protein from animal tissues used in cooking as a fixative (8)

2 Scottish cured haddock or whiting (6)

3 ‘Cooked’ in French (4)

4 Result of being beaten into a mixture (7)

5 Okra or lady’s fingers (in Indian food) (6)

6 Husks of grain sifted from flour (4)

13 Flat dish of 4 eggs (8)

14 Types of cooking and cooking preparation (7)

16 Tray or large plate for serving food or drinks (6)

18 Cause to raise, puff up, for example, by yeast (6)

20 --- chowder, a New England seafood favourite (4)

21 Potato piece with a different meaning in the US to Ireland & UK (4)

Facilitating the transfer of research knowledge to SMEs is at the heart of what online magazine tasteofscience.com aims to do. Here, Dr Helena McMahon – External Service Manager at Institute of Technology, Tralee, and co-founder of the website – explains the importance of this resource.

There are huge amounts of really valuable technology developments going into literature that food entrepreneurs are either not aware of, or can’t decipher from the knowledge that is presented,” explains Dr Helena McMahon. Collaboration between researchers and industry is key to drive innovation within the food sector. However, as Helena points out, many SMEs cannot access developments in research easily or understand how to apply these findings to their everyday business. With this in mind, Helena and a group of peers who were working on the European project TRADEIT – aimed at protecting Europe’s food heritage – were tasked with addressing this issue and the launch of www.tasteofscience.com followed in 2015.

Helena’s own career began with a keen interest in the human genome and how it worked. “I’ve always been fascinated with science and biology, and how things work,” she says. “I completed a degree in biomedical science in UCD, followed by a Masters in genetics in Trinity, examining why alterations in genetic code lead to particular disorders and how to leverage your genetic code to develop therapeutics in the whole area of personalised medicine.”

Helena went on to do a PhD in gene and cellular therapeutics focused on brittle bone disease before moving into the area of nutrigenomics, examining the impact of diet on the quality of pork at Teagasc. Her career in the area of food and food ingredients progressed at Shannon Applied Biotechnology Centre in Tralee where she spent time extracting polysaccharides from algae to use in functional foods. “The whole area of creating novel ingredients isolated from plants led me to the issue of funding to support technological transfer and innovation into food companies with the TRADEIT project.” The TRADEIT project was developed to support small scale food producers, particularly those that produce traditional or artisan food products. “Working on this project was enlightening in terms of the challenges that food companies encounter when dealing with technology from universities. A lot of the technology produced can be easily applied by large scale food companies however the vast majority of food businesses are SMEs and 80% have less than 10 employees. So, we decided to launch an online open innovation platform for the food industry that would present very technical scientific developments in a way that is more accessible to individuals who run SMEs. It offers the information in a journalistic style, explaining how the research can benefit businesses.” When Helena started working on tasteofscience.com she held the role of principle investigator within Shannon Applied Biotechnology Centre, working in the area of research and securing funding at a national level. Today, Helena is External Services Manager at Institute of Technology, Tralee – a role she explains is primarily around industry liaisons, engaging externally with companies within Tralee and nationally to try to identify opportunities for collaboration, encouraging strategic projects and partnerships. “This can be collaboration between the institute and industry or between academics where we can develop specific education programmes.”

The taste of science website is constantly growing and Helena views it as an important resource for Ireland’s SMEs working within the food sector. “We are growing our network and evolving our content. It started out with just a small group of partners and now we have grown our reach to over 10,000 SMEs across Europe.”

Commenting on the practical success of the website, Helena points to an example of one company that accessed research through the site. “A small Irish ice-cream producer was having trouble with its supply chain and managing the export of ice-cream from Ireland to Europe. The challenge was that the ice-cream was thawing en route and the company could not identify the point at which this was happening. With the research that they accessed on the site they were able to get a sensor that could be placed on their packages and therefore identify the break in their supply chain.”

The website is supported by social media accounts, which is a key part of the communication strategy: “Social media is a really powerful way of delivering short pieces of information to our readers and a lot of our engagement comes through Twitter and Facebook.” Users can also create a profile on tasteofscience.com to ensure they receive more targeted information and they can sign up for summary newsletters with articles that are in line with the company profile.

Looking forward, Helena says that they are keen to develop partnerships with universities: “It’s a tool that universities can use to promote their research output to the industry and also use it as an open science platform. And we would also like to start partnerships with food associations looking to get high quality content to their members.”

For more information visit www.tasteofscience.com

ABOUT DR HELENA MCMAHON

Childhood: Born and raised in Tralee. Educated locally and emigrated for a number of years before the Kingdom called her back to Ireland in 2009.

Hobbies: "I've recently taken up golf and there is nothing better than a good podcast and running by the sea with friends."

Favourite foods: "I'm not big on cooking but am really big on eating. Come to my house, bring a dish, and we can sit around chatting for hours."

Plastic pollution of the oceans is an environmental disaster, but is there a food scare lurking beneath the waves too? Journalist David Burrows reports.

Last year’s Volvo Ocean Race lasted eight months and covered 45,000 nautical miles. En route, one of the teams – “Turn The Tide On Plastics” – diligently collected water samples that could be tested for the presence of microplastics – small pieces of plastic measuring less than 5mm. The data was used to create a microplastics map of the world’s oceans, which highlights just how ubiquitous these particles are: only three of the 75 samples collected contained no microplastics.

Few of those close to the topic of plastic pollution – arguably the environmental issue of 2018 – will have been surprised by the findings. However, it’s worth recapping what we know so far. Each year, at least eight million tonnes of plastics “leak” into the ocean, according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF), a think-tank dedicated to driving a “new plastics economy”. To put that in context, that’s about five garbage truckloads in the time it takes to read this article (a rate of one truck per minute). Plastic packaging represents a “major share” of this leakage, according to the EMF; indeed, carry on like this and by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish (by weight).

“Plastic is everywhere, and suddenly we have decided that is a very bad thing,” noted Stephen Buranyi in an article for The Guardian in November 2018 (“The Plastic Backlash: What’s Behind Our Sudden Rage – And Will It Make A Difference?”). The public is up in arms – thousands of them posted crisp packets back to Walkers, and many more have ripped off excessive packaging at supermarket checkouts in “plastic attacks”. And in the past 12 months only animal welfare and caged poultry attracted more activity from campaign groups, according to tracking firm Sigwatch.

Those in the food sector have been forced to react – many have whipped up new packaging policies and been quick to sign up to industry commitments like the UK Plastics Pact. The development of government policy has also been uncharacteristically rapid too – the UK’s 25-year environment plan, published in January 2018, focused heavily on plastics. A new resources and waste strategy, presented just before Christmas, includes a number of policy proposals designed to reduce single-use items, with consultations underway for bans on cotton bud sticks, drinks stirrers and straws. The European Commission also has a new Plastics Strategy, with additional bans on plastic drinks stirrers and cutlery, as well as food and drink containers made from expanded polystyrene. As Buranyi wrote: “At the highest levels of government the plastic panic can resemble a scrambled response to a natural disaster, or a public health crisis.”

His choice of words is interesting, not least because what started as an environmental disaster is quickly snowballing into a public health crisis. In January 2019, the Science Advice for Policy by European Academies (SAPEA) working group produced the latest review of the evidence to date. “A Scientific Perspective on Microplastics in Nature and Society” concluded that there is “no evidence of widespread risk to human health from [nano and microplastics] at present”. Still, a lack of evidence for risk doesn’t mean we should assume that there is no risk, said SAPEA’s Professor Bart Koelmans. “It’s vital we communicate clearly about uncertainties in the evidence, rather than just assuming that everything is fine just because we don’t know for sure.”

Indeed, wherever researchers have looked in our food and drink chain, they’ve found plastic: honey, beer, bottled and tap water, sea salt and of course seafood. “The problem is wide-scale and the concentrations are low,” Richard Thompson, professor of marine biology at Plymouth University, UK, told me in an interview for EU Observer in December 2017, “but if we carry on as normal and have this conversation again in 20 years’ time we may well have reached concentration levels that are a concern.”

It was Thompson and his team who, all the way back in 2004, showed that waters around the north-east Atlantic had become contaminated by microscopic fragments of plastic and that the abundance of this material had increased significantly over time. In 2013, their research published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin showed plastics in 184 of the 504 fish they examined from the English Channel. Species assessed included whiting, horse mackerel, John Dory and red gurnard. There is now a rich library of similar research. In 2016, for example, a study published in the journal Nature, showed that 28% of fish and shellfish on sale in Indonesia had eaten man-made debris – and all of it was plastic. The authors said that because anthropogenic debris is associated with a “cocktail of priority pollutants”, some of which can transfer to animals upon ingestion, their findings support concern that chemicals from man-made debris may be transferring to humans via diets containing fish and shellfish. This, they added, raises important questions regarding the bioaccumulation and biomagnification of chemicals and consequences for human health.

Indeed, the tiny plastic particles floating about in the sea can act like sponges for persistent bioaccumulating toxins, so anything that mistakenly eats them gets a shot of this chemical cocktail. The plastics sector has played this effect down, but the impact this could have further up the food chain is not yet clear. Last year, the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Science & Health ran a special issue on micro- and nanoplastics – the latter measured in the millionths of a millimetre. A paper by Messika Revel, Amélie Châtel and Catherine Mouneyrac reviewed the evidence to date. They concluded that the adverse effects from micro- and nanoplastics may result from a combination of the plastic’s intrinsic toxicity (such as physical damage); chemical composition (for example, the leaching of additives); and ability to adsorb, concentrate, and release environmental pollutants into the organisms. Microplastics could also serve as a vector for pathogens, they said, and since they have been detected in various trophic levels, additional studies are needed to assess the bioaccumulation of adsorbed contaminants and eventually biomagnification, which “may occur in higher trophic levels, and could eventually affect human health”.

In October 2018, experts at the Medical University of Vienna and the Environment Agency Austria published the results of a pilot study involving a small group of participants (eight) from countries across the world, including Finland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, the UK and Austria. Each person kept a food diary in the week leading up to a stool sampling. The diaries showed that all participants were exposed to plastics by consuming plastic wrapped foods or drinking from plastic bottles. None of the participants were vegetarians and six of them consumed sea fish. Up to nine different plastics, sized between 50 and 500 micrometres, were found, with polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) the most common. On average, the researchers found 20 microplastic particles per 10g of stool. Microplastic may impact human health via the gastrointestinal tract, the team noted, where it could affect the tolerance and immune response of the gut by bioaccumulation or aiding transmission of toxic chemicals and pathogens. Dr Philipp Schwabl led the research. “While the highest plastic concentrations in animal studies have been found in the gut, the smallest microplastic particles are capable of entering the blood stream, lymphatic system and may even reach the liver,” he said. “Now that we have first evidence for microplastics inside humans, we need further research to understand what this means for human health.”

So, the warning signs are there. But what do the regulators and governments’ advisors think? Is the establishment of a ‘safe’ threshold for plastic in water and food on the cards? The most recent opinion published by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on this subject was in 2016. Are they harmful to consumers? “It’s too early to say but it seems unlikely, at least for microplastics,” said Dr Peter Hollman, a member of the working group that helped EFSA’s Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain (CONTAM) draft the statement. However, nanoplastics, which have received less attention to date, could pose more problems. “Knowledge on the toxicity of nanoplastics is particularly needed because these particles may penetrate all kinds of tissues and eventually end up in cells,” he said. “Research should generate data on the occurrence of microplastics and especially nanoplastics in food, their fate in the gastrointestinal tract, and their toxicity.”  Researchers at Lund University, Sweden, have since discovered that nanosized plastic particles can accumulate in fish brains and cause damage.

In the UK, the chief medical officer has been keen not to rock the boat and create a food scare based on current evidence. In her 2017 report, “Health Impacts Of All Pollution – What Do We Know?” – Professor Dame Sally Davies dedicated just six paragraphs of the 187-pages to microplastics. “Exposure to microplastics through food is possible, based on studies of seafood; however, it is unknown if this translates into meaningful exposure in the population,” the report reads, whilst human exposure, hazard and therefore consequences of exposure to these microplastics are “largely unquantified”.

This is not just about plastic in the sea, either. In fact, dietary exposure to microplastic particles is likely to be relatively low compared with inhalation of microplastics, according to Food Standards Agency evidence submitted to an Environmental Audit Committee enquiry in 2016. “We need to establish toxic characteristics of microplastics, their behaviour in the body, and what constitutes a safe threshold for exposure when plastics are either ingested or inhaled,” explained Stephanie Wright from King’s College London in an article for the British Medical Journal in September 2017. “We must also relate these data to the different sources, types of plastic, and concentrations we are currently exposed to and, importantly, will be exposed to in the future thanks to the growing global addiction to plastic in all its forms.”

Indeed, production of plastic packaging is forecast to double in the next 15 years, to more than 150 million tonnes. Currently, 32% of what is produced leaks into the environment – and whatever toxic effects are discovered in the future, it is going to be impossible to withdraw all those particles floating around in the environment already. Food safety issue or not, it’s certainly an uncomfortable thought.

ABOUT DAVID BURROWS

David is a freelance writer specialising in sustainability and food/retail. A graduate in agricultural sciences, and a postgraduate in periodical journalism, David is currently freelance writer, editor and researcher for several food/business publications, including Poultry Business, Farmers Guardian and Retail Week.

During 2018, safefood hosted 11 food safety workshops throughout the island of Ireland, in partnership with Teagasc. The aim of these workshops was to help small and medium-sized food businesses and provide practical advice on good food safety practices. Guest presenters from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland and local food businesses also took part in the workshops. Workshops were attended by 221 participants representing 120 businesses. 
Feedback was overwhelmingly positive and attendees provided some great feedback and ideas which will influence new workshops now being planned for 2019.

We’d love to hear from you. Would you like us to feature your research or industry sector? What else would you like us to cover in the world of food safety? Send your article ideas, feedback and suggestions to knowledgenetwork@safefood.eu

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We talk to Dr Ann McMahon at Queens University Belfast about her role as Business Alliance Manager for Agri-food and Nutrition Sciences

Over the past decade, increased collaboration between industry and research bodies has led to more impactful research and innovative product development. Dr Ann McMahon – whose role it is to encourage and support collaborative efforts between agri-food businesses and researchers at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) – explains: “It used to be the case that the value of research was weighed against publication, but now it is about the impact of that research. Universities need to be engaging with public bodies and the private sector to ensure this is achieved. QUB sees considerable value in working with a whole range of external parties outside of academia to ensure the research that is happening in QUB is shaped by the end users: that it is impactful and has a role in society.”

Ann is Business Alliance Manager for Agri-food and Nutrition Sciences at QUB. Her role involves encouraging joined-up thinking between researchers within the university and partner organisations from the business community, the public sector, and voluntary and charitable sector. “I connect our researchers working in the area of agri-food and nutrition, and related areas, with businesses and organisations operating in the relevant sector to try to develop fruitful collaborations between the two. I have a good handle on what expertise each researcher in the university has, so I link up the right researchers with the right companies.”

Ann has established strong connections in the private sector and also meets up with food companies at events and conferences where she gets an insight into their needs regarding R&D. In some cases, companies also approach her with more specific requests. “I want to pair them with the right team and encourage them to start engaging together. Hopefully it will end in a piece of research going forward, but it doesn’t always. However, it is about getting the conversation going. We need to get researchers into the mindset of knowing what a company might want or need and the best way to do that is get them talking to each other. My job is almost like a broker.”

The second part of Ann’s job is to support these partnerships as they progress. “I look at funding opportunities that could help in moving a project forward and I also assist with the necessary legal items related to the agreement and facilitate negotiations here.” “It is quite a full remit,” she continues. “I work with businesses right across the food chain, from meat producers and seaweed farmers to large global companies and supermarkets. Some companies approach us with a very specific request where they have already identified what research they are looking to undertake; and other companies might come to us with a more open-ended query, such as maybe having a waste product that they think might offer some value to their operation.”

Ann notes that these partnerships are all mutually beneficial and drive further collaborations within the academic field. “What I find really rewarding is being able to bring different research teams together who wouldn’t normally work together. I am working with some food companies at moment and the areas of research include pharmaceutical, molecular biology and polymer processing.”

Discussing current trends, Ann explains that she is overseeing a number of projects that are focusing on developing opportunities into export markets beyond the UK. “If they can achieve a few days extra shelf life on a product that means they can move further out when it comes to market reach. We are looking into novel innovative methods to do this, dedicating a wealth of expertise and capabilities to come up with solutions."

The university also has close connections with safefood. “We have successfully been awarded safefood research projects and have provided research back to safefood. There is very good interaction between the two organisations and I have been involved in connecting that up"

Overall, Ann says that she has witnessed a growing appetite within the agri-food industry for increased collaboration in recent years: “it is clear to me that the agri food supply chain is very open to finding out how a university could help them in their sustainability as a company and in the sustainability of the supply chain they are a part of...they see the need, to ensure they remain competitive."

ABOUT ANN

Where did you grow up?
I grew up on a dairy farm in Minterburn - a tiny rural community in Co Tyrone.

What hobbies do you enjoy?
I enjoy hill walking and reading crime fiction.

Do you like to cook?
I love to cook and am currently working my way through Jamie Oliver's 5 ingredients cookbook.

What are you reading right now?
My favourite author at present is Peter James who wrote the best book ever - Dead Simple!

Solutions:

Across: 5 Extra-virgin, 7 Iced, 8 Emmental, 9 Celeriac, 11 Grog, 12 Scum, 14 Maize oil, 16 Skinfuls, 18

Real, 19 Salad dishes.

Down: 1 Stodge, 2 Sage, 3 Big Mac, 4 Egg-nog, 5 Eccles cakes, 6 Neapolitans, 10 Aga, 13 Mangle, 14

Mouldy, 15 Earthy, 17 Shin.

Hidden word: FESTIVE

safefood is delighted to offer one lucky crossword winner a luxury hamper of gourmet food from Arcadia Delicatessen in Belfast.

Simply find the hidden word in the crossword, made up from the letters highlighted, and send the answer to knowledgenetwork@safefood.eu before 1st February 2019. This competition is open to Knowledge Network Members on the island of Ireland only.

ACROSS

5 Olive oil made from the first pressing (5-6)
7 Like a Belgian bun (4)
8 Hard Swiss cheese (variant spelling) (8)
9 Umbelliferous salad vegetable with a turnip-like base (8)
11 Alcoholic drink, rum and water, traditionally meted out to mariners (4)
12 Unwanted matter in the form of froth or film that forms after boiling or fermenting (4)
14 Frying agent (5,3)
16 More than one over the eight, more than once! (8)
18 ---- ale, cask-conditioned beer served without added gas pressure (4)
19 Waldorf and Caesar are examples of these (5,6)

DOWN

1 Heavy and filling (usually starchy) food (6)
2 Stuffing ingredient (4)
3 Popular item on a fast food menu (3,3)
4 Christmas tipple, the main ingredient of which is mixed in an alcoholic punch (3-3)
5 Sweet pastries stuffed with currants, a North of England favourite (6,5)
6 Little wrapped milk or plain chocolates (11)
10 Permanently-lit oven, a shortening of its Swedish name (3)
13 Crush, break: water extractor (6)
14 Affected by fungus (6)
15 Describing an effect of terroir on some wines, like Cote du Rhone, for instance (6)
17 Cheap cut of beef used in stews and casseroles (4)

Last year's Christmas Turkey Cooking campaign was a huge success, with a 53% increase in web traffic and more than 80,000 visitors to the safefood website between December 24th and 25th. The 2018 Christmas Turkey Cooking campaign aims to be even more effective with radio, digital and social media advertising along with a Facebook Messenger bot to support our customer services. This year the campaign is aimed at promoting our online turkey cooking calculator as well as a new Christmas information hub. Visit safefood.eu to find out more.

The calculator is also available as an App on Google Play and on the Apple App Store.

The Knowledge Network organised two day courses on Introduction to Microbiology Method Validation/ Verification and Measurement of Uncertainty for food safety laboratory staff across the island. The course allowed food testing laboratory staff to understand concepts, terminology, sources of information and approaches to method validation. It also covered how laboratory verification methods can be correctly performed and estimating uncertainty, including how to interpret/ report results using measurement uncertainty. The courses were held in Belfast, Dublin and Cork in September and October with 44 participants from both public and private food safety laboratories. The feedback was very positive with 100% of attendees saying that they would recommend the course to their colleagues.

Participants and trainers at the Introduction to Microbiology, Method Validation, Verification and Measurement of Uncertainty course that was held in the safefood office in Cork

Laboratory Analyst Edward Leslie works for the Department of Agriculture Food and Marine. He recently took part in the safefood Training & Mobility Funding Programme, which funded his attendance at the Fifth Congress for European Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians (EAVLD) in Brussels.

Edward, who works in the Sligo Regional Veterinary Laboratory, went to the three-day conference organised by EAVLD who have a mission is to improve veterinary and public health by providing a platform for communication among veterinary laboratory diagnosticians and promote the highest standards in European veterinary laboratories. “The main objective of attending was to take the knowledge and skills gained at the conference and apply it in my current role in Ireland, and subsequently to improve disease surveillance, food protection, animal/food health, and disease diagnostics in Ireland and Europe,” he explains. “Other aims of attending included; meeting and conversing with experts in animal disease diagnostics, manufacturers of animal disease diagnostic kits, and to give me a wider view on the future of disease surveillance in Europe.”

There were over 70 lectures across the three days, presented by some of the most experienced people in the field of animal disease diagnostics in Europe. “Some of the key lectures included; foot and mouth on farm testing, antimicrobial resistance, spread of the bluetongue disease in Europe, and the current outbreak in African swine fever in Europe, among others,” Edward notes.

After the conference, Edward was able to share a back to office report with both his own colleagues in the laboratory and other regional veterinary laboratories. As well as giving him the opportunity to meet people from across Europe, the conference provided Edward with information on new diagnostic tools. He explains, “It gave me a great insight into the future of animal disease diagnostics and of the severe threats emerging with new and exotic diseases that could affect Irish food safety in the future.”

Edward enjoyed the experience and says: “I would strongly recommend people to apply for the Training and Mobility Funding Programme as it has helped to enhance my skills and knowledge in disease diagnostics and to improve food safety in Ireland.

ABOUT THE SAFEFOOD TRAINING AND MOBILITY FUNDING PROGRAMME

The programme enables members to visit and spend time in another organisation to develop their knowledge/ expertise in an area related to food safety. Participants can broaden their expertise, exchange knowledge and facilitate collaboration to enhance food safety between organisations, sectors and/or disciplines. The programme is exclusive to Knowledge Network members and offers bursaries up to €1,200 or sterling equivalent per applicant. Previous successful applicants have included Environmental Health Officers, food testing laboratories staff, food industry personnel, food safety researchers, as well as those working in academia.

For information on the 2019 programme please keep an eye out on www.safefood.eu.

It has been said that the first step to solving a problem is to recognise there is one. Scientists, campaigners, policy experts, consultants and even some major companies have been saying for some time that the food system is broken.

However, at the Belfast Summit on Global Food Integrity earlier this year it became clear that perhaps policymakers (and even politicians?) are now prepared to admit it too. We are about to walk into a “great disruption”, suggested Dr John Bell, director of the bioeconomy at DG Research and Innovation in the European Commission. “We need to future proof our food system [and] we can’t do that without reviewing the system,” he said.

Just prior to the Summit, the European Commission had confirmed (in its agricultural spending review) that €10 billion from the next research programme – Horizon Europe, running from 2021 to 2027 – would be dedicated to food and natural resources (that’s about 10% of the total budget). “We are very serious about taking this discussion forward,” said Bell. “It is a doubling of our current commitment."

It’s a significant shift in approach, according to some of the industry leaders I spoke to in Belfast. Historically, the food sector has been down the European Commission’s pecking order, they said – it’s seen as a “very strong sector” and people had enough (cheap food) to eat. “There were always other sectors seen as higher priorities, but that is changing,” a director at a multinational food brand explained.

Consider the challenges that loom large and you might say ‘it’s about time’. Climate change, as this summer’s droughts again proved, is already creating significant challenges, and producers have been warned to expect more crop losses from extreme weather, greater damage from pests, and further pressure on water security. The nutritional quality of some foods could also plummet. In August, a paper published by Harvard Chan School of Public Health showed how rising levels of carbon dioxide from human activity are making staple crops like rice and wheat less nutritious – by 2050, 175 million people could become zinc deficient and 122 million could be protein deficient. The billions of people currently living with nutritional deficiencies would also likely see their conditions worsen as a result of less nutritious crops, the authors said.

Meanwhile, in September, the UN’s annual state of food security and nutrition report provided a sobering analysis of the state of play. The number of hungry people in the world is growing and limited progress is being made in addressing the multiple forms of malnutrition, ranging from child stunting to adult obesity. What’s more, the gains made in ending hunger and malnutrition (as per the Sustainable Development Goals) are being “eroded” by climate variability and exposure to more complex, frequent and intense climate extremes. As Bell suggested at the Belfast Summit: without food and nutritional security there is no security.

Further evidence of the “imbalance” in food systems is waste. As the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the US, the issue perhaps justified its own “seat at the UN”, quipped Bell. However, this is another serious threat: the EU alone produces 88 million tonnes of food waste a year, and the associated costs are estimated at €143 billion. That ‘waste’ could potentially feed 200 million people. Not only are the current systems wasteful, they are also “making us sick”, according to Cécilia Rocha, director of the School of Nutrition at Ryerson University (Toronto). Presenting the results of a report for the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (iPES) in Belfast, Rocha said the food system has been successful, generally, in creating affordable food that is safe, but the system is “at risk”. Rocha and her colleagues have unpicked the food system and discovered that many of the most severe health impacts – from respiratory diseases to a range of cancers and systemic livelihood stresses – are linked to industrial food and farming practices.

The above is by no means an extensive list – there’s also soil degradation to consider, for example, as well as the
potential impact of genetically modified crops and pesticides, not to mention fair pricing and plastic packaging. Indeed, consider the current health impacts alongside the social and environmental impacts and the case for a complete overhaul of our food systems becomes all the more compelling. “We have a food system that is changing, that is under threat,” said Pamela Byrne, Food Safety of Ireland CEO, “but what is the solution?”

Indeed, once we are all on the same page and have admitted there is a problem, the next step is to start thinking about possible solutions. This is where the EU Commission’s €10 billion will come in handy, but there is another pan-European project tackling some of these issues. Launched in November 2016, EITFood (the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s new food programme), connects 50 partners from leading businesses, universities, research centres and institutes across 13 countries in Europe and from the entire food value chain. From the UK, the universities of Reading, Cambridge and Queen’s University Belfast are all involved, but flick through the partners list and you will find everyone from John Deere and PepsiCo to Siemens and Sodexo. “There is no initiative even close to this,” said Ellen de Brabander, senior VP for research and development at Pepsico and the former (and first) CEO of EIT-Food.

The programme’s ambition is laudable: to redesign the way we produce, deliver, consume and recycle our food and to create a future-proof and effective food sector that supports a sustainable and circular bio-economy. It has seven years and €1.2 billion (25% from EU and 75% from partners) to make a start, but just a year in and there are already some “exciting signs” of what’s possible in this kind of collaboration, Filip Fontaine told safefood, in his first interview as the initiative’s interim CEO. “EIT-Food is about bringing together the people who have the skills and the reach to change things,” he explained. “People can be working in siloes and on their own ‘islands’ so this collaborative approach will move things up a gear.”

EIT-Food is all about tapping into near-market innovations – turning all the great work that’s going on at research institutes, amongst start-ups and within global corporates into commercial solutions. There are four broad themes, namely:

• Personalised healthy food.
• The digitalisation of the food system.
• Consumer-driven supply chain development, customised products and new technology in farming, processing and retail. 
• Resource-efficient processes, making food more sustainable by eliminating waste and recycling by-products throughout the food chain.

Scan the new website and you get a feel for the breadth of projects underway – covering everything from alternative proteins (to relieve pressure from livestock – a major producer of greenhouse gases) and food fraud, to sustainable diets. For instance, there is one involving training graduate students in processing, fractionation and characterisation of algal components – skills that can be used to develop innovative food products based on microalgae components. The German Institute of Food Technologies meanwhile is developing sustainable plant-based protein sources for the bakery sector. Another project involves generating hand-held technology to assess the freshness, nutritional value and identity of certain types of fish, while in the Games of Foods project, experts will design an “escape game” based on food-related puzzles and riddles to help improve awareness of healthy and balanced diets (a nut which has to date proved hard to crack).

Unfortunately, the detail available is sparse – it’s early days and things will take time, Fontaine admits. However, there have already been some tangible results. The circular food generator track, for example, challenges masters students to develop ways to valorise food waste from manufacturing and retail with “high commercial potential”. Early streams include bread, potatoes and bananas and the 10-month challenge ends with a competition between the teams and one innovation using banana peels could soon be picked up by major retailers. Unfortunately, Fontaine can’t provide any more detail, but says he likes the idea because it was simple (“bananas are not high tech”), involved students, universities and retailers and was commercially scalable. “It also wouldn’t have happened without EIT-Food,” he says.

Some of the research will be much harder to convey, of course – there are some involving “plant-based ice-structuring proteins”, and one that will look at the benefits of feeding poultry insects and probiotics in order to reduce pathogens and antibiotic resistance in the birds. However, every project is tested against its potential benefit to people: the last thing the collaborators can afford to do is make an app that no-one will use, or create a healthy snack that people won’t eat. “That’s just a waste of time, effort, money and talent,” Fontaine says. This is why an integral project will be the trust barometer. “We are trying to measure trust not in food labels but in the food system as a whole,” he says. “And we also want to help people – we want to show them that food is healthy and it’s valuable.”

And with only €1.2 billion EIT-Food has to make every cent count. “It’s 100% not enough funding,” says one of those involved in the programme. Only a few days before the interview, Fontaine had used a speech at a conference in Bulgaria to call on member states and the EU to show “strong support” for research and innovation in the agri-food sector. “This is not a small task, and the challenges we face are not small either,” he said. An understatement if ever there was one.

ABOUT DAVID BURROWS

David is a freelance writer specialising in sustainability and food/retail. A graduate in agricultural sciences, and a postgraduate in periodical journalism, David is currently freelance writer, editor and researcher for several food/business publications, including Poultry Business, Farmers Guardian and Retail Week.

Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) need to verify the validity of a food product's shelf life as declared by the food business operator. There is no generic method to estimate and set a food product's shelf life, because many different conditions can affect product safety and quality. To assist EHOs in this area safefood organised training workshops in Northern Ireland to help EHOs understand factors that can influence the shelf life of food products, the validation of shelf life, the role of the EHO and how an EHO can assess compliance. Two one-day workshops were held in Newtownabbey (18th June 2018) and Cookstown (19th June 2018) with 60 EHOs in attendance.

We have now completed 7 of our 10 food safety workshops for small and medium-sized food businesses in association with Teagasc entitled Knowledge is Power: What you need to know to produce safe food for the consumer. These workshops provide practical advice on bacterial contamination, effective cleaning methods, food poisoning bacteria and allergens. We also have guest speakers representing the competent authority and a local food producing SME. Workshops are free, but places are limited, and allocated on a first come, first served basis.

To register to attend, please visit www.safefood.eu

Derry/Londonderry:
4 September – Everglades Hotel

Belfast:
5 September – Mossley Hill (Newtownabbey)

Dublin:
25 September – Crowne Plaza Blanchardstown, Dublin 15

It is vital that staff working in the chemical analysis of food have a good understanding of ‘uncertainty of measurement’. It allows meaningful comparison of results against reference values or standards, for legislative purposes and it is also a requirement of ISO 17025. Consequently, safefood organised one-day workshops on analytical uncertainty of measurement in Belfast, Cork, and Dublin in June 2018. The workshops introduced concepts, terminology, and sources of information, along with tools for generating uncertainty estimates and insight into how best to interpret and report results using uncertainty of measurement. These workshops were attended by 48 laboratory staff across the island of Ireland and the feedback was very positive.