The Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s University Belfast, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) are set to spearhead a multi-million pound EU programme, along with technology partner arc-net, that aims to revolutionise the global approach to tackling food fraud.
The European Horizon 2020 programme has been dubbed as one of the world’s largest food safety projects and, along with the Chinese MOST, has awarded €10 million towards an EU-China partnership to improve food safety and address food fraud.
The EU-China-Safe project will involve key players in the food industry, research organisations and Governments across the two areas, while Belfast-headquartered arc-net will provide its technology platform to help the project move forward.
More specifically, arc-net will utilise its Blockchain-powered platform and virtual laboratories that will create a space to share and demonstrate best practice.
Professor Elliott, the project’s co-ordinator, commented: “We are delighted that The Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS) at Queen’s University Belfast will lead this global project. Working together with arc-net and key stakeholders in the global food system will help to address the importance of food traceability and security across two of the world’s largest trading markets.”
In addition, Professor Yongning Wu, chief scientist at the China National Centre for Food Safety Risk Assessment and co-ordinator of the Chinese efforts in the project, noted that the partnership is “of immense” importance to help deliver safe food to all citizens and added: “Working together across the EU and China will enable us to identify where food fraud is happening, address the root causes and thereby enable us to improve food safety standards for all our citizens.”
Kieran Kelly, CEO of arc-net, said: “arc-net are delighted to be selected as the official technology partner in such a ground-breaking and transformative project. arc-net’s mission has always been to ensure the health of current and future generations by providing access to safe and authentic food and we see this project as a vital step in achieving this goal.
“The use of innovative technologies will result in the creation of fully transparent supply chain network which will become the foundation for a trusted digital community.”
Reported instances of food fraud are on the increase and occur on a global scale, costing an estimated $52 billion globally each year.
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
