Improving Food Safety in Europe: developing rapid tests for chemical contaminants in a new European research project

Safer food through rapid and cost-efficient tests for chemical contaminants in the food chain. This is the major goal of a new European research project called CONffIDENCE.

One of the major concerns of European governments, food producers and consumers is the presence of chemical contaminants in food and feed that may be harmful to our health. Consequently, Regulatory Authorities and the food/ feed industries spend large amounts on tests to ensure product safety. Many of the currently used tests are complicated, time-consuming and expensive, making it difficult to intervene and take corrective actions during the food production process. There is therefore an urgent need for validated screening tools, which are simple, inexpensive, rapid and are able to detect as many contaminants in parallel as possible. These tests will be developed in CONffIDENCE for a wide variety of chemical contaminants.

Once developed, the simplified methods will also be used to (i) study the transfer of harmful contaminants from feed to eggs and meat and (ii) to perform surveys of food in order to measure consumer exposure to chemical contaminants.