European Union Framework Projects

Q-Pork Chains: The aim is to develop high quality pork products in sustainable production systems with low environmental impact. It is a five year project funded involving 51 partners. For more information please visit www.q-porkchains.org

Biotracer: The objective of BIOTRACER is to create tools and models for the improvement of tracing accidental and deliberate microbial contamination of feed and food, including bottled water. BIOTRACER has 46 project partners from 24 countries (including four INCO countries). The project started 1 January 2007, and will close 31 December 2010. For more information please visit www.biotracer.org

TRACEBACK: Traceback aims to create a standard European traceability system applicable to the entire food supply chain and involving its key players from field to shelf. The strength of TRACEBACK derives from the joint effort of 28 partners representing 11 EU countries that allows the integration of essential worldwide competences in the food sector, ICT and microdevices. For more information please visit www.traceback-ip.eu   

Pathogen combat: Despite significant investment, the incidence of food derived disease is still too high in the EU. With the full title >>Control and prevention of emerging and future pathogens at cellular and molecular level throughout the food chain<< - PathogenCombat attacks this pan-European problem to reduce the incidence of food borne disease. The project period is from April 2005 - March 2010 including 44 Partners from Europe and with established links to INCO countries. For more information please visit www.pathogencombat.com

TRUEFOOD: Traditional United Europe Food (Contract number: FOOD -CT-2006-016264) - is an Integrated Project (IP) financed by the European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme for RTD. The project started 1 May 2006 and will last 4 years. The overall aim of TRUEFOOD is to introduce suitable innovations into traditional food industry to maintain and increase the competitiveness of the industry in an increasingly global European market place. This will be achieved through close integration of R&D activities, demonstration, and training and dissemination activities. For more information please visit www.truefood.eu

CONffIDENCE: 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. For more information please visit www.conffidence.eu

SEAFOODplus: The strategic objective of the SEAFOODplus Integrated Programme is to reduce health problems and to increase well-being among European consumers by applying the benefits obtained through consumption of health promoting and safe seafood 1 products of high eating quality. For more information please visit www.seafoodplus.org