CONffIDENCE project objectives

CONffIDENCE is an ambitious project, which aims to further expand Europe’s excellent position in (i) food safety issues and (ii) chemical detection technology, as well as to ensure the competitiveness of the involved European industries. The project has five major objectives:

• Assurance of quality and safety in the European food supply from farm to fork by the development of new simplified detection methods for chemical contaminants with effective features: fast, easy-to-use, robust, high-throughput, broad-spectrum (multiplex) and cost-efficient
• Development of new detection tools for key- and emerging risks as recognised by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), e.g. perfluorinated compounds and naturally occurring toxins from algae, plants and fungi;
• Improvement of consumer exposure assessments. The developed fast and cost-efficient methods will allow a higher sampling and analysis density in monitoring. Thus, a better understanding of contaminant levels in food and feed will be achieved;
• Contribution to the validation of risk-benefit and predictive hazard behaviour models in accordance with the strategic agenda of the European Technology Platform (ETP) Food for Life;
• Extensive dissemination and training of new detection methods to all relevant stakeholders, including industrial and governmental end-users and students, to advance technology exploitation.