New EU project about food sampling and food safety
The National Veterinary Institute will get a new EU project; BASELINE, about food sampling and food safety. The institute will lead the work package about seafood, and be involved in the work packages about meat, fruits and vegetables, and harmonising of food sampling regimes.
The full title is: ”Selection and improving of fit-for-purpose sampling procedures for specific foods and risks”, and short title BASELINE.
The University of Bologna, Italy, will coordinate the project, and 17 other partners will be involved, One of them is the Norwegian salmon producer Nordlaks in Vesterålen. The project will run for 4 years with an economic contribution from EU of about 5 millions Euros. The National Veterinary Institute will receive about 15 percent of this.
It is usually a simple task to take a food sample. On the other hand, it may be challenging to ensure that the sample is representative for the whole batch, and gives the right picture of the food safety of the food a week or two after the analysis is carried out. Several outbreaks have taken place with foods that have been analysed in accordance with official regulations. One example is the Listeria outbreak from camembert cheese at two Norwegian hospitals during the fall 2007. Such cases illustrate that the current sampling schemes are not good enough in all situations, but there are also other reasons why a revision may be useful. Two of them are the increased globalisation and changed consumer food preferences.
Globalised food trade
Globalised food trade and processing makes it difficult to have the overview of how food is handled before it reaches the consumers. Many countries have therefore chosen to set very strict regulations for imported food. In some cases, the restrictions appear irrelevant, unrealistic and/or stricter than what should be needed to ensure the food safety. More harmonised legislation between countries would give more predictable and fair conditions, and also make it easier to carry out international risk assessments.
The consumption of “ready-to-eat” products, i.e. products that can be bought and consumed as it is, is increasing worldwide. Such products are assumed to be the reason to that the number of cases of some food borne illnesses have increased. Food sampling schemes that improve the food safety of such products are therefore desired.
The aim of BASELINE is to improve and harmonise sampling techniques that can be incorporated in food safety assurance schemes. Methods and protocols for accurate and precise fit-for-purpose sampling strategies will be developed for specific situations, food products and risks (biological and chemical). The work will partly build on the suggestion from international food safety expert groups to introduce “FSÒs” – food safety objectives and “POs” – performance objectives.
We will investigate whether such parameters can be introduced from a practical point of view, and if so, whether they will lead to more safe food for the consumers. Introduction of FSOs involves that quantitative risk assessments should be considered more important in decisions of limit values for food risk components.
On the other hand, introduction of POs, i.e. a limit value for food risk agents in raw materials, ingredients and semi-finished food products, will probably lead to that that small deviations during food production and distribution are less likely to cause unsafe food, and also that the responsibility for the food safety between the stakeholders in the farm-to-fork chain is distributed in a more predictable and fair way than today.
For further information:
Taran Skjerdal, researcher
Telephone: +4723216268
E-mail: taran.skjerdal@vetinst.no
Arne Flåøyen, Head of Department
Department of Feed and Food Safety
Telephone: +47 23 21 62 70/+47 482 24 286
E-mail: arne.flaoyen@vetinst.no
