ALLIANCE

We are preparing to conduct guided interviews with the tool providers, as part of the work on uses case scenarios and innovation management, which also includes consideration of market needs for the tools and potential exploitation pathways. One of the challenges we are facing is getting a better understanding of the frequency and types of fraud associated with quality labels. If we are going to propose solutions, we also have to be able to show not only how these tools can reduce the potential for fraud but also the likely benefits in terms of brand reputation, quality and safety, regulatory compliance, transparency, consumer confidence, and cost.

WATSON

In response to progress across the project, we are becoming more involved in critical tasks. Specifically, our focus is on stakeholders’ expectations regarding authenticity and traceability within food systems. Like ALLIANCE, we are exploring development of use case scenarios and planning pilots. Attention has also shifted to dissemination and communication strategies to amplify impact of the results.

FishEUTrust

Consortium has been busy working on M18 reporting. During this Period, the project has mapped and analysed stakeholders, established the various living labs and drafted best practice and operational protocols, identified consumer expectation and key characteristics of consumer group(s), allowing these to be clustered in target countries,  published SOPs for sampling, DNA extraction and processing of samples for NGS based metagenomics, validated nanostructured platforms for sensors and verified novel toolkit with sensors for detection pathogenic bacteria. The communication, dissemination and exploitation plan has been implemented with the launch of the project website and social media accounts as well as participation in a range of events. Finally, EuroFIR published the draft sex and gender plan (D9.3).

Data4Food2030

🚀 The Data4Food2030 newsletter 6th edition is out

✨ Keep up with our latest activities and get a glimpse of the project’s newest developments in 2024!

📩 Access it here. – 📝 If you want to subscriber directly, click here

WASTELESS

Are you an expert in food loss and waste measurement & monitoring framework?

WASTELESS needs your input! Who? – 🎯 Anyone who works in food loss and waste measurement.

 Join the online survey and contribute to development of an effective food loss and waste measurement & monitoring framework.

💬 Survey in English – 🕞 15 minutes to complete – CLICK HERE

SWEET

The final project meeting and a dedicated session for stakeholder was held in Brussels on 17-18th January 2024, just as Brussels enjoyed its heaviest snow fall since 2013. Each of the WPs reported on their activities, and summaries were shared with the wider stakeholder group. Like FNS-Cloud, SWEET was presented at the 14th European Nutrition Conference #FENS2023 in Belgrade, Serbia, on 14-17th November. The team participated in conference educational workshops, interactive sessions and poster presentations on nutrition science research, and how sweetener and sweetness enhancers can help address important dietary-related health challenges Europe is facing. For more information about SWEET and key results visit the website.

ZERO Hidden Hunger

 

EFSA ALLERGENS

 

EFSA EUOpenFood

The consortium is working on quality assessment of European FCDBs and identifying a strategy for filling missing values, amendments to the SSD2 and, importantly, whether there might be a better approach for mapping food composition datasets, and factors related to food composition data at the EU level. These will be finalised before Easter, and are essential for the final Phase 1 deliverable, draft guidance for collection, storage, and maintenance of the EU FCDB, which should be completed in August 2024.

Project updates covering July to December 2023:

EUOpenFood (EFSA FCDB)

Partners have been busy finalising D1.1 “Search protocol, execution, organisation of the results, and future use” and D1.2 2 “Methodology for the evaluation of data from national FCDBs including quality criteria, minimum requirements, and summary indicators”. EuroFIR and CAPNUTRA have extracted data from Mintel GNPD and converted these to a format compatible with FoodEXplorer as well as partly matching fields (automatically and manually) with the EuroFIR component thesauri, with the EFSA SSD2 Chemical Parameter Catalogue, and FoodEX2. Results were discussed with EFSA in September, and the next official meeting will be in December to discuss D1.3-1.5. These deliverables consider the quality of values and the 16 EU FCDBs in the project, mapping of EFSA SSD2 Chemical Parameter Catalogue to EuroFIR component thesauri and FoodEX2, and yield factors quality criteria, respectively.

 

EFSA ALLERGENS

In the meantime, our partner – University of Surrey (UK) has been examining in silico tools and in vitro and/or in vivo methods for assessing allergenicity of food proteins. Any shortcomings and capacity to accurately distinguish between known allergens and known non-allergenic proteins are being documented and assessment criteria being developed, building on quality criteria that have been published previously.

 

ALLIANCE

Siân Astley and Christina-Ariadni Valagkouti attended consortium meeting (Bologna, IT – 5-6 September 2023) and presented Task 4.1 – Uses case scenarios, planning and preparation (D4.1 due M18, May 2024). The presentation summarised work on the detailed plan for use cases scenarios, including analysing results from the WP2 Delphi questionnaires and insights collected in D2.1 – Food Fraud landscape, strategic gap analysis, user needs & requirements. We are gathering details of the use cases to identify needs and requirements, exploring each supply chain and associated risks of potential fraud, comparing current and envisioned workflows, and starting to map requirements (e.g., technical, legal, and practical) to achieve envisioned workflow for PDO/PGI Extra Virgin Olive Oil (IT), PDO Feta Cheese (GR), Organic Honey (FR), PGI Austrian Fava beans (ES), PGI Lika potatoes (HR), Organic pasta (IT), and PDO Arilje raspberries (SR). At the end of November, Task 5.3 – Innovation Management, Market Analysis and Commercial Roadmap had its first meeting to discuss activities that will start in M15, January 2024.

ALLIANCE website

FishEUTrust

FishEUTrust was present at the stand at Aquaculture Europe Conference (18-21 September 2023, Vienna – AT) with three other EU-funded projects on aquaculture (SAFE, EUMOFA, Sea2See, FishEUTrust), and had joint oral presentation with Sea2See. Hana Mušinović attended the consortium meeting (Florence, IT – 9-10 October 2023), including a workshop related to co-creation living labs (CLLs); Siân Astley also presented progress on gender action and monitoring. Beneficiaries presented work performed over the recent months including developing the preliminary business process and digital method models, state-of-the-art and literature on seafood chain models and process engineering, and input process steps and parameters critical to complete detailed and working executable model to integrate envisioned innovative digital service use cases. Action plans for M18-M24 mean WP6 and WP7 start their activities with EuroFIR providing information on fish and seafood data availability and possible digitalisation of the SEAFOOD^TOMORROW Benchmark Tool. EuroFIR has also reviewed D10.2 – OEI related to Ethics requirements and, in December, attended the IPR & Exploitation webinar, part of the Task 3.3 Exploitation strategy development and Task 3.4 Cross-sector Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) management strategy.

FishEUTrust website 

SWEET

Environmental life cycle assessment of drink and yoghurt products using non-nutritive sweeteners and sweetness enhancers in place of added sugar (James Suckling; Stephen Morse; Richard Murphy; Monique Raats; Sian Astley; Ascension Ciruelos; Abel Crespo; Jason Halford; Jo Harrold; Alain Le-Bail; Elena Koukouna; Hana Musinovic; Anne Raben; Mark Roe; Jasper Scholten; Corey Scott; Charlotte Westbroek) has been submitted to The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment for consideration. This manuscript describes an environmental study of sweeteners and sweetness enhancers in context of drink and yoghurt, the first of its kind. Also, Blonk (NL) has now published datasets describing the environmental impacts results of sweeteners and sweetness enhancers per kg end-product, as calculated by SWEET – for more information CLICK HERE.

SWEET website 

WATSON

Hana Mušinović and Christina-Ariadni Valagkouti attended Consortium meeting in Athens (19-20 September 2023). Beneficiaries presented work done since the kick-off meeting including development of the WATSON methodological framework to detect and prevent fraudulent activities in wine (PT), PGI honey (ES), extra virgin olive 0il (IT), meat (DE), dairy (FI) and white fish (NO) food chains. In addition, two deliverables were published, namely D1.1 Watson Project Management Handbook, and D1.2 “Data Management Plan, Ethics, Fundamental Rights, Data and Privacy Issues (Interim Report)” including data management plan.

WATSON website

Data4Food2030

The second project newsletter presented work done for:

• Stakeholder dialogue: What are the perceptions and experiences of food system participants of the data economy?
• Defining the data economy for food systems definition
• Expanding the project’s network during Synergy Days Conference

Read more HERE.

The project has also released its first video, introducing Data4Food2030 – watch it HERE.

A new report “Food 2030 Research and Innovation – Pathways for action 2.0” from European Commission’s (DG RTD) has been published, which provides an update on the European Commission’s Food 2030 initiative and aims to guide future research and innovation policy reflections related to Horizon Europe, the farm-to-fork strategy, the European Green Deal and beyond. George Beers (WUR, coordinator) and Grigoris Chatzikostas (FSH) also contributed to the drafting of Pathway 10: Data & Digital Transformation.

WASTELESS

EuroFIR is actively involved in dissemination activities, and we’d like to encourage you to follow the project updates on social media platforms!

WASTELESS LinkedIN    WASTELESS X (previously Twitter)  – you can also sign up to the project newsletter on the website.

Also, recently, WASTELESS launched their Sustainable Food System Innovation Platform, an online environment for those interested in sustainable food who want to stay up-to-date. Individual users can browse SFS databases such as Case Studies, Initiatives, Innovations, Practice Abstracts, publications, and weblinks, and registered users upload their work and comment on others. The platform also offers links to free online courses on topics geared towards small and mid-sized food professionals (e.g., best practices in short food supply chain innovations).

Are you an expert in food loss and waste measurement & monitoring framework?

WASTELESS needs your input!

Join the online survey to contribute to the development of an effective food loss and waste measurement & monitoring framework.

🎯 Anyone who works in relation to food loss and waste measurement

💬 Survey in English

🕞 15 minutes to complete

FNS-Cloud

FNS-Cloud finished on 30th September following a successful final event, hosted by EuroFIR in Brussels (BE, 12-13th September 2023). For more information, access to the FNSCloud catalogues, the community of practice with many helpful tips and support for users, and videos from events, visit the project website HERE.

In this publication, we are going to introduce you to our project updates covering the period from July to October 2023.

EUOpenFood (EFSA FCDB)

Project partners were busy addressing EFSA’s comments and finalizing deliverable D1.1 “Search protocol, execution, organisation of the results, and future use” and have also successfully finalized next deliverable D1.2 2 “Methodology for the evaluation of data from national FCDBs including quality criteria, minimum requirements, and summary indicators”. EuroFIR and CAPNUTRA have performed food supplements data extraction from Mintel GNPD and have managed to convert them into a format compatible with FoodEXplorer, and partly match them (both automatically and manually) with the EuroFIR component thesauri, with the EFSA SSD2 Chemical Parameter Catalog, and with the FoodEX2 coding system. All results were discussed during the meeting with EFSA in September and the next official meeting is organised for December where next deliverables D1.3-1.5 will be discussed.

ALLIANCE

Sian Astley and Christina-Ariadni Valagkouti attended Consortium meeting in Bologna on 5-6 September 2023 and presented on Task 4.1 – Uses case scenarios, planning and preparation [M12-M19]. Presentation summarised preparatory work done over the summer on developing detailed plan to organise use cases scenarios, including analysing results from the Delphi questionnaires and insights collected in the deliverable D2.1 – Food Fraud Landscape, Strategic Gap Analysis, User Needs & Requirements that aimed at gathering use cases needs and requirements, exploring each supply chain and associated fraud risks, comparing current and envisioned workflows and starting to map requirements to achieve envisioned workflow for each of the seven food supply chains/pilot use case demonstrators – PDO/PGI Extra Virgin Olive Oil (IT), PDO Feta Cheese (GR), Organic Honey (FR), PGI Austrian Fava beans (ES), PGI Lika potatoes (HR), Organic pasta (IT), and PDO Arilje raspberries (SR).

ALLIANCE website

FishEUTrust

FishEUTrust was present at the stand at Aquaculture Europe Conference held 18 to 21 September 2023 in Vienna connecting four EU project on Aquaculture (SAFE, EUMOFA, Sea2See, FishEUTrust) and also held joint oral presentation with its sister project Sea2See. Hana Mušinović will attend Consortium meeting in Florence on 9-10 October 2023, including workshop related to Co-creation Living Labs (CLLs). During that occasion Sian Astley will present online on WP9: Gender action and monitoring. Project partners presented the work performed in the recent months including developing the preliminary business process and digital method models. Technology & process engineering SMEs are collecting and reviewing the state of the art and available literature on the seafood chain models and process engineering and also collecting inputs from the key partners directly involved in the seafood value chain. Required input process steps and parameters are critical to complete the detailed and working executable model in order to integrate the envisioned innovative digital service use cases.

FishEUTrust website 

SWEET

Health and safety of sweeteners and sweetness enhancers are well studied, but not their environmental impact. WP5 has previously published papers on thaumatin (DOI 10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.137226) and steviol glycosides (DOI 10.1007/s11367-022-02127-9) and this month presents work on the environmental impact of aspartame and neotame. This is the first such study attempting to quantify environmental impact of neotame that shows there are significant uncertainties related to life cycle inventory data and data derivation method and further highlights the difficulties of conducting a life cycle assessment of highly refined industrial food additives – Suckling et al., (2023) Environmental life cycle assessment of production of the non-nutritive sweeteners aspartame (E951) and neotame (E961) from chemical processes: The SWEET project – Journal of Cleaner Production https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.138854.

Also published this week is an article on Environmental life cycle assessment of production of the non-nutritive sweetener sucralose (E955) derived from cane sugar produced in the United States of America: The SWEET project < https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11367-023-02228-z >, which describes An attributional, cradle-to-gate LCA was conducted on sucralose production in the USA.

Finally, the team is working on a paper describing the impact of replacing sugars in yogurts and drinks.

SWEET website 

WATSON

Hana Mušinović and Christina-Ariadni Valagkouti attended Consortium meeting in Athens on 19-20 September 2023. Partners presented work done since the kick-off meeting in March including developing WATSON methodological framework to detect and prevent fraudulent activities throughout the six selected food chains – Wine (PT), PGI Honey (ES), Extra Virgin Olive Oil (IT), Meat (DE), Dairy (FI) and White Fish (NO). In addition, beside developing communication & dissemination strategy and Watson identity, two other deliverables were submitted – D1.1, the Watson Project Management Handbook, that provides an overview of all important aspects related to how Watson will be managed, and D1.2 “Data Management Plan, Ethics, Fundamental Rights, Data and Privacy Issues (Interim Report)” including Data Management Plan (DMP) that maps data used as input & generated per Task during WATSON lifetime.

WATSON website

Data4Food2030

EuroFIR contributes to WP6 – Communication, outreach and impact maximisation, ensuring information flow amongst beneficiaries and user communities as well as maximising exploitation of outputs. Our current efforts are focused on crafting case study infographics and summaries, to help disseminate the project’s activities across our networks.

There is an annual meeting of the project happening on the 6th of October in Thessaloniki, Greece. It’s a chance for the consortium to review what has been achieved, collaborate, and plan ahead. It’s proceeded by Synergy Days, where exciting ideas and innovations are sure to be in the spotlight.

Make sure to follow project progress in social media:

Data4Food2030 Linkedin

Data4Food2030 X (previously Twitter)

Data4Food website

WASTELESS

EuroFIR is leading data collection, management, and integration (Task 4.1) considering Open Science and FAIR principles to promote interoperability, management, and governance of WASTELESS data specifically but food loss and waste data in general. The task has started this month and we’re working on the development of guidelines for data collection together with case studies leaders. EuroFIR is also actively involved in dissemination activities, and we’d like to encourage you to follow the project updates on social media platforms!

WASTELESS Linkedin

WASTELESS X (previously Twitter)

WASTELESS Website