In the wake of the melamine crisis (2008) and the horsemeat crisis (2013), the European Commission funded in 2014 the project FoodIntegrity under the 7th framework program. The project was funded with close to nine million Euro, and with a total cost of almost twelve million Euro. The project ran over a period of five years and is officially due to finish next month. However, the final conference already took place in Nantes, France on 14th and 15th November.
First of all, the project leader, Paul Brereton has done an outstanding job putting the project together and leading all 62 participants around the cliffs this kind of project usually entails.
The project addressed the need to provide tools for competent authorities to prevent food fraud and tackle it where it already happened. This included databases which can be used to identify commodities at risk, analytical tools to detect food adulteration and approaches to ensure a safe supply chain.
The final FoodIntegrity conference delivered the outcomes of participant’s efforts. It was exciting to listen to high-level researchers like Michele Suman (Barilla), Marco Alorio (University Orientale Piemonte) and Vito Gallo (Polytechnic University of Bari) further driving developments of non-targeted method approaches using neural networks and self-learning algorithms.
Marco Arlorio speaking at the FoodIntegrity Conference (Author: Bert Popping)
In a marvelous presentation, Peter Whelan from the Irish Food Safety Authority demonstrated that (some) food testing laboratories still have to learn how to analyze samples. He was explaining that samples of oregano were sent to two different laboratories. One laboratory identified three adulterants, the other laboratory reported just oregano. After a conversation and re-analysis, also the second laboratory suddenly confirmed the adulterants. This again shows that all laboratories are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Peter Whelan speaking at the FoodIntegrity Conference (Author: Bert Popping)
In the session ‘terms and definitions’, it became very obvious that there is still no general agreement on how to define central terms relating to food integrity (and the term food integrity itself). Codex Alimentarius has started work, and so has CEN and other organizations. How quickly an alignment of terminology can be achieved is questionable after having listened to the different speakers in session six (Standardisation: new initiatives).
Identifying gaps like this is one major task addressed by the ILSI Food Authenticity Taskforce. Diána Banati (Executive Director ILSI Europe) and Bert Popping (FOCOS – Food Consulting Strategically) explained the work of the three subgroups ‘terms & definition’, ‘guidance documents’ and ‘global food authenticity activity mapping’.
ILSI activities on food authenticity presented by Bert Popping at the FoodIntegrity conference (Author: Bert Popping)
Much progress has been achieved throughout the project. But now, it is coming to an end. And FoodIntegrity is dead – or is it? During the evening dinner, Clare King from New Foods announced that there will be a FoodIntegrity conference in 2020, organized by Paul Brereton. Hopefully by then, even without the funding support of the European Commission, significant further progress has been made. I certainly look forward to hearing about that.
