FoodIntegrity 2016: The New Food Review

Last week I had the pleasure of attending FoodIntegrity 2016 ‘Assuring the integrity of the food chain: fighting food fraud’ – a conference focused on food fraud, integrity of the food chain, and analysis technologies. Held in Prague over 6-7th April, New Food was proud to be a media partner to this important event; the 3rd meeting of the FoodIntegrity project.

FoodIntegrity is defined as ‘the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished or in perfect condition’. Providing assurance to consumers and other stakeholders about the safety, authenticity and quality of European food (integrity) is of prime importance in adding value to the European Agri-food economy. Attendees included representatives of funding bodies, food retailers, processing food industries, quality brands, public administration, control laboratories, NGOs and the research community.

Throughout the conference there were many interesting keynote lectures, presentations and poster sessions on topics such as gaps in current research, citizen and consumer science approaches to food integrity and authenticity of products, as well as workshops about food crime, and how to improve protection from food fraud.

The FoodIntegrity project comprises of 38 participants from 18 European countries and one from China. The key focus is to consolidate, harmonise and mobilise the European capability on food authentication to ensure consumer confidence and protect European added value. The five year (2014 – 2018) €12M project aims to reduce the current barriers to data sharing and utilisation that is crucial to combating food fraud by supplying methods and tools that will address both enforcement and industry needs. The project will not only seek to enhance early warning capabilities, but working with industry, will develop methods, systems and processes that will assure the quality, authenticity and safety of the food chain.

While at the FoodIntegrity conference New Food hosted a live roundtable event, with speakers from the conference as participants. The full recording will be available via the New Food website, keep an eye out for the preview which will be online soon.

Click on the thumbnails below to see full-sized images from the exhibition: