Building Trust through Authentic Food and Safety, Limassol, 28-31 October 2012

The State General Laboratory of Cyprus and the European Commission Joint Research Centre joined forces to organise a workshop entitled “BuTrAFoS”: “Building Trust through Authentic Food and Safety”, in Limassol from October 28 to 31, 2012. The event was held during the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the European Union and supported by other institutions including Customs 2013 Programme. 160 participants from 28 countries attended.

The workshop focused on the use of analytical methods to ensure safe and authentic food and provided a forum for sharing information among European and other experts from government, industry and academia, for identifying best working practices on the identification and authentication of alcoholic beverages and other foodstuffs.

With the globalization of the food supply, emerging risks will bring new challenges for which all stakeholders will need to be prepared. An ever-increasing amount of the food consumed in Europe is being produced in Asia and South America. Today robust analytical and spectroscopic techniques are available to face these risks, what is missing is an overall strategy for their implementation and validation. The specific requirements of the Customs laboratories were discussed. Analytical methods need to be adapted to real-life situations where speed is required and external conditions do not resemble the clean environment of the analytical laboratory. Rapid screening methods are ideal as first line of defense. One of the major challenges in using the above fingerprinting techniques is the generation of suitable databases. As well as the technical problems involved in the management of large quantities of data, their format, exchangeability and validation, issues associated with proprietary rights of the database owner need to be addressed.

Discussions held over the three days of the “BuTrAFoS” workshop highlighted the need to bridge the information gap between research institutes, industry and customs and other control laboratories. Cooperation between all the stakeholders is very important for the protection of both the EU economy and public health. Future policy in this area must be built.