Theme: Food Safety
The ever-increasing profile of food safety, the second theme of the conference, may be attributed to a number of issues of global importance.
Consumers are increasingly well-informed about the hazards associated with the production and consumption of food and demand safety as the most important ingredient of any food product. Recent high-profile incidents of food-related disease have further heightened the call for more effective measures to reduce or eliminate hazards in food and to safeguard against natural, accidental and intentional contamination. Food production is increasingly complex; there is greater volume and diversity of trade in raw materials and the final product and the demand for greater variety and novel foods has resulted in the development and application of new technologies – these create further challenges to the supply of safe food.
NZ has a well-deserved reputation for innovation in the area of food safety research and risk management and has been at the forefront of developing and applying risk-based approaches at national and international levels. The close relationships between funding bodies, regulatory authorities, research providers and industry have been a fundamental element of this success. Collaborative, interdisciplinary research programmes, led by members of the Consortium within ESR, AgResearch and Massey University, are providing new insight into the contribution of different food pathways to human disease and the nature of food-borne risk – from primary production to consumption. Molecular tools and modelling are being combined to inform surveillance activities for both current and emerging hazards, and the development of risk reduction measures in the food chain. The pace of change in food production methods, combined with recent innovations in the detection and characterisation of food-borne hazards, has resulted in a number of new advances in food-risk management.
The conference will provide an ideal opportunity to showcase these advances and generate new ideas for future EU-NZ collaborative research into food safety.
